Dial M for Murder

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation to "open up" the material from the home of the unhappy couple. The result may not be one of Hitchcock's deepest films but it's a thoroughly engaging chamber movie. It also features Grace Kelly at her loveliest, the same year she made Rear Window with Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder was filmed in the briefly trendy 3-D process and Hitchcock shot some scenes to bring out the depth of the 3-D field; it's especially good for the nail-biting attempted murder of Kelly and her desperate reach for a pair of scissors that seems to be just outside her grasp. However, the film was rarely shown with the proper 3-D projection, going out "flat" instead (a 1980 reissue restored the process for a limited theatrical release). Dial M was remade in 1998 as A Perfect Murder,a film that changed and expanded the material, with no improvement on the clean, witty original. --Robert Horton

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-08-15 rating:
Riveting and full of suspense!

One of the most absorbing and suspenseful of Hitchcock movies ever! No matter how many times this is viewed, it's still as fresh and as riveting as the first time around!

Ray Milland plays a husband who's been cheated upon by his rich wife. To get his revenge upon she and her lover, and to acquire his 'premature' inheritance, he plans her murder - but things go terribly wrong when everything backfires, and all over the most minute of details...

Grace Kelly stars as the unfortunate 'target', and Anthony Dawson plays the unusually 'nice' and handsome murderer to be (he can strangle me anytime!!) The reactions of some of the characters in this film are startlingly 'natural'. A classic example is how after being 'coerced' into the act, the would-be murderer is unable to look his victim in the eye whilst attempting to carry it out - a clever little detail!

Also stars John Williams and a 'bit part' for Patrick Allen.

Fantastic feature!

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review by: date: 2007-08-08 rating:
A professional but relatively unexciting Hitchcock movie
For me, this is one of those Hitchcock movies that pretty much leaves me cold. Four elements of the movie consistently keep it no more than tepid, at least for me. First, I can't think of any way Kelly could have stabbed the guy trying to strangle her unless she first dislocated her shoulder. Even without anything that drastic, I don't she how she could, in that position, use enough force to actually kill the guy. It just puts me off as being a little contemptuous by Hitchcock of his audience's intelligence. Second, while I like Kelly when she's happily playing sexual games (as in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief), her careful high social style and finishing school accent just turn me off when she's "acting." Third, Robert Cummings is a poor substitute for a Hitchcock hero. I can't see a wealthy, smart woman such as Margot Wendice falling in love with a guy like Cummings. Fourth, it's basically a film of the stage play. I assume Hitchcock had some contractual commitment he was playing out when he agreed to do the film. He keeps things relatively interesting, but it's basically, it seems to me, a static presentation.

But I do watch it, or at least pieces of it. Solving the puzzle of how Tony arranged things and then catching Tony is clever. I like Ray Milland, and I think he did a classy job in this movie. He handles the finale, when he's caught and going to the station, with a lot of style. And John Williams, who plays the police inspector, is always reliable.

When I see the movie I try to imagine a major casting shift, assuming Hitchock was stuck with Cummings. Assume that Tony Wendice is played by Robert Cummings...not as charming as Milland, much weaker, a kind of parasite that Margot found, thought she loved and married. She's not in love with him anymore, but she cares for him and feels responsible for him. And then she meets Ray Milland, a strong, mature, clever fellow. And now it's Robert Cummings who sees his meal ticket being wooed away from him. I think it might have worked very well, especially with Milland's style being used to loosen up Kelly. If only Hitchcock had asked me.

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review by: bel_78 date: 2007-03-16 rating:
Do you really believe in the perfect murder?
Do you really believe in the perfect murder? Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), a former tennis player, does. That is the reason why he decides that asking someone to kill his beautiful and very rich wife is a good idea.

But why kill someone just for the sake of doing so? Truth to be told, Tony is afraid that Margot (Grace Kelly) will ask him for divorce in order to marry Mark (Robert Cummings), an American writer she had a brief affair with after marrying Tony. Margot decided to stay with her husband, and is not aware of the fact that he knows about her past relationship with Mark, who happens to visit them when Tony decides he has to kill his wife. But how will he do it? And will he succeed?

If you really want to know the answers to those questions, and enjoy a well-paced thriller, watch "Dial M for Murder (1954). Enjoy it...

Belen Alcat

PS: "Dial M for Murder" was the inspiration for "A perfect murder" (1998), a film starring Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow.

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review by: date: 2006-05-16 rating:
Whisky, keys ,raincoats and a corpse
I think that is fair to say that "Dial M for Murder" doesn't quite rank alongside the best of Hitchcock's Fifties films like "Vertigo", "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "North by Northwest" , but it comes pretty close. It actually reminded me of one of Hitchcock's earlier films , "Rope" ,which also was filmed almost exclusively in one room. Like "Rope" ,"Dial M" also features a strangulation scene and a canny detective trying to catch out a suave, composed and cunning killer. The radiant Grace Kelly lights up the film throughout ,while the two male leads, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings, put in slick ,commanding performances as well. "Dial M" is a suspense packed thriller, with an intricately constructed plot based around Milland's decision to avenge his wife's adultery in the most extreme way possible. Things don't go quite according to plan however and a series of tense scenes ensue as a high-stakes game of cat and mouse is played out on screen. Technically the quality of this colour film is fine ; the sound and picture are fairly good even though the film does not seem to have been remastered in any way.


review by: A soul doctor, so to say date: 2006-01-25 rating:
The murderer is unlatched on the crime scene.
Hitchcock builds a whole crime story and its suspense on one single element : the brand new latch keys that appeared after the second world war that, as an inspector says, all look alike. The suspense is not that of discovering who the criminal or murderer is. We know that from the very start. There is a big surprise about who is killed but that is only a detail on the road to perfection that cannot be reached by an amateur criminal. The suspense is how is he going to go through, what new invention and lie is he going to invent to cover up his tracks and to push the inspector's attacks away. He is a great talker and a very good liar, so we do discover how his mind works full time on inventing new stories and explanations that are all false but cannot be proved so. But this film is not one of the best by Hitchcock because the sentimental and dramatic content is rather shallow : a British gigolo husband and a British rich wife, plus an American lover for the wife : British nostalgia and American bravado for the American public, British naiveness and American rudeness for the British audience. Hitchcock was always bifacial and bifocal to satisfy his two main English speaking audiences. That menage-à-trois situationcan only provoke the husband into getting rid of the wife and grabbing her money. That is banal and trite. This situation is in no way thickened or deepened by further considerations or developments. That leads to a dead end, which is kind of normal for a crime story, in which everyone, including the police, knows the truth but cannot do anything, even if that knowledge is enough to save the wife's life who was programmed to be executed for the murder of the ancillary murderer of the tale. I guess we are before the banning of the death penalty in Great Britain. So the end is also particularly sick if not even sickening : a murderer can go through an investigation unharmed for lack of hard evidence, even if we can imagine he is going to lose the wife (who no longer is HIS wife in HER mind) and her money in a subsequent divorce. Rather entertaining, and be sure Alfred Hitchcock managed to set his mug in one or two frames : look for him having some side-kicks in his own film.

Dr Jacques

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