Saturday, January 30, 2010

#38 Dial M For Murder: It might work out on paper

1954. dir. Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams.

Seen it before? No.

Hitchcock movie #2 out of 11. Taut and suspenseful as always. This one has a fairly intricate plot...

Ray Milland plays Tony Wendice, a washed up former tennis player with a rich wife Mary, played by Grace Kelly. He suspects she's cheating, and he's right... Her secret boyfriend is Mark, who comes and visits. She doesn't know that Tony knows about the affair, and while she's out with Mark, Tony tries to set up a perfect murder.

He hires a casual acquaintance, Captain Lesgate, to murder her while he's out with Mark, so he'll have an alibi. Lesgate is a shady character, so Tony is able to blackmail him into doing the deed. But then he botches it, so Tony is forced to resort to Plan B: Frame his wife for murder...

My wife always jokes that she can kill me and get away with it. "I know people", she says, "I would have an alibi, nobody would suspect a thing." She is of course full of it. She would screw up some minor detail and the whole thing would fall apart. Hopefully this movie was instructional for her.

Position on the list: 197
Hitchcock's cameo: I didn't see one. Must be a blink-and-you-missed-it sort of thing.

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