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Thriller, Crime, Drama 105 min PG
Rotten Tomatoes90%Metacritic75IMDb
Is this the man she was waiting for... or the man who was waiting for her?
When her American lover visits London, a wealthy woman’s jealous husband hatches a plan to murder her and inherit her fortune.
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Intimate, resolved, meticulous and plot-driven.
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Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Taste Buds's numbers.
This is definitely my favourite Hitchcock thriller. Adapted from Frederick Knott's equally enduring stage play; Ray Milland is wonderfully suave, debonaire and calculating as "Tony" who goes to some effort to enact the perfect murder to despatch his cheating wife (Grace Kelly). He hires petty crook Anthony Dawson to do the deed, but it all goes wrong and she ends up alive, well and leaving him with an unforeseen headache. Enter, in my view, the star of this film - John Williams ("Chief Inspector Hubbard") a resolutely persistent terrier of a police officer who is not at all convinced by the explanations he is getting and now we play the mother of all cat-and-mouse games. Dimitri Tiomkin's score adds tons to this expertly paced, thoroughly engrossing story that builds to a cleverly developed crescendo.
Read the whole review on TMDBIt is very obvious that this was written as a play. It is very heavy on exposition to cover almost all activities that take place outside of the "essentially" one room of the apartment. Nothing wrong with that, but it gives the film a different feel. This is more of an intellectual exercise than a action-packed murder mystery. It might have been better to have written Tony as a chess master than a former tennis star. It would have been a bit more in keeping with his plots and strategies. Even the action in the actual murder scene is "play-like" - a rather exaggerated initial reaction to being stabbed followed by the more drawn out dying, dying, dead finale. Each time I watch this movie, I'm always struck by the strange idea that apparently every citizen is required to account for every pound note that they acquire and spend? I have no idea if this was remotely true in England in 1954, but it seems odd and unlikely. It's not critical, but it is jarring when they talk about it, because it seems so unnatural. This is a great movie and a great story. However, the over-head camera angles for some scenes seems a strange choice, and Grace Kelly is clearly under-utilized in this role. Marg
Read the whole review on TMDBNo, I'm afraid my murders would be something like my bridge: I'd make some stupid mistake and never realize it until I found everybody was looking at me. Middle tier Hitchcock it may be, by his own admission, but it's still one of the finest mystery thrillers around. Ray Milland plays Tony Wendice, a former tennis player married to Grace Kelly's Margot, who is the source of his wealth. Fearing his lifestyle is about to come to an end due to her dalliances with American mystery writer, Mark Halliday (Robert Cummins), Tony hatches a plan to have her murdered by an old acquaintance whom he has over a barrel with blackmail. However, the plan backfires and a whole new strategy is needed to save Tony from suspicion. Based on the popular and successful play by Frederick Knott (who adapts for the screenplay here), Dial M For Murder was a film Hitchcock had little time for. In fact, having already started work on Rear Window, Hitch treated Dial M For Murder as a jobbing assignment. His mood was further darkened by Jack Warner's insistence that the film be shot in 3D, with all the camera restraints that such a production brings. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, the restraints and general mood
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“Does the smallness hold it back?”
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“Is this Alfred Hitchcock's best work?”
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“Is the polish hiding a lack of heart?”
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25 profiled raters. Loved most by The Prestige Hunters.
If you loved this film, the television, the book, the music, the game.
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