Dial M for Murder
With Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings.
US, 1954, 35mm, color, 105 min.
Print source: Warner Bros.
Hitchcock defined newcomer Grace Kelly's coolly urbane screen persona in her role as the unknowing victim of her jealous husband's devilish and seemingly perfect plan to have her murdered. Often dismissed as one of Hitchcock's minor films, Dial M for Murder is indeed more stylistically understated and subtle than his other Fifties’ films. Yet, seen in the context of the larger oeuvre, Dial M for Murder pushes to a further extreme Hitchcock's vision of the meticulously designed and plotted murder as a dark metaphor for cinema, with the camera's deadly gaze transforming the beautiful star into potential victim and each object in the frame into a potential weapon. Hitchcock's close adaptation of the eponymous play maintained the taut stageboundness of the original while adding a literal a new dimension through the use of the then still novel 3-D process, the director's first and only foray into the shortly popular format. Dial M for Murder will be shown here in the rarely screened 2-D version, released simultaneously for theaters not equipped for 3-D.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Vertigo
To Catch a Thief
The Trouble with Harry
The Paradine Case
Stage Fright
Rebecca
Notorious
Rear Window
Dial M for Murder
Lifeboat
Saboteur
Murder!
Family Plot
Under Capricorn
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Spellbound
Strangers on a Train
Torn Curtain
Suspicion
Shadow of a Doubt
