Dial M for Murder

Plot synopsis:
Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) is a former tennis player who married Margot (Grace Kelly) partly for her money. To please his wife, he has given up tennis and now sells sports equipment. Margot once had a relationship with Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), an American crime scriptwriter, but broke it off when he went back to the U.S. for a year.In time they stopped writing to each other, and when Mark returns to London she tells him that she burned all his letters but one. Margo explains to Mark that the letter was stolen by a blackmailer who demanded £50, so Margot payed by mailing the money to a pawn shop location as intended, but the money was never picked up and the letter was never returned. Mark tells Margo that he wants to tell Tony about them so she can divorce Tony so she and Mark can be together, but Margot refuses out of fear of hurting Tony's feelings.It is also revealed that Tony and Margot have made their wills, naming each other as beneficiary with assets and money totaling £90,000. For a year, Tony meticulously plans Margot's murder. She has no idea that Tony knows of her love for Mark. He has gone to great lengths to steal a handbag containing one of Mark's letters, and even assumed the role of the anonymous Brixton-based blackmailer to find out whether she would pay to have it back. (She did, but he asked for only £50 and she did not, of course, get the letter back.) He even watched them having a little farewell party, eating spaghetti with mushrooms in Mark's studio flat in Chelsea.Tony slyly withdraws small amounts of money for a year, collecting £1,000 in (used) one-pound (£1) notes, with which he plans to pay a contract killer. He singles out the perfect man to do the job: Charles Alexander "C.A." Swann (Anthony Dawson), who now calls himself "Captain Lesgate", a former acquaintance who has embarked on a life of petty crime since even before leaving Cambridge where he and Tony were both students. By following him and finding out about his past and associations, Tony soon gets enough to blackmail Swann into murdering his wife.Tony uses the opportunity of Mark's return to London to carry out his plan. Under a pretext he has to prepare an urgent report for his boss, he has Margot and Mark go to the theatre and, when they are gone, he invites Swann to his flat under another pretext - wanting to buy an expensive car from him. When Swann arrives at 61A Charrington Gardens that night, Tony gets down to business. There is no time to lose, as he has planned the murder for the following night. Trapped in a corner by the revelations of his past crimes and tempted by the money, Swann reluctantly agrees to carry out the murder.Tony has invited Mark to join him at a stag party in a nearby hotel; this is how he secures himself an alibi. The idea is that the police should think that a burglar was surprised by Margot, that he panicked, strangled her and left without the loot. He has told Swann that he is going to phone his own flat at exactly 11:00 p.m. so that Margot will come to the living-room to answer the phone, whereupon she will be murdered by Swann. There are only two keys to the Wendices' ground floor apartment. Before leaving for the stag party, Tony steals Margot's key from her handbag and hides it under the stair carpet outside their flat for Swann to use.Mark, a writer of crime scenarios, says at one point that, theoretically, he would be able to plan the perfect murder but that it would be impossible to carry out any plan of his because in real life people just do not act according to other people's plans. This is true of Margot, too: Instead of listening to the radio in her bedroom when Tony and Mark are away, she tells her husband of her own plans to go to the cinema that night. Tony has a hard time persuading his wife to instead stay at home and stick into an album some old newspaper clippings of his when he was a tennis star. Margot finally consents and for that reason takes a (seemingly) huge pair of scissors out of her mending basket (which also contains a pair of her stockings). When she has finished the tiresome job she goes to bed, carelessly leaving the scissors lying on the desk next to the phone.According to Tony's plan, Swann secretly enters the Wendices' flat shortly before 11 o'clock, hides behind the drawn curtains, a scarf in his hands, and waits for the telephone to ring and for Margot to come out of her bedroom to answer it.At the dinner stag party, Tony's plans again nearly go wrong when his wristwatch stops and he has to ask for the time, and when he learns that it is a few minutes past 11:00, he hurriedly leaves the ballroom and to a payphone in the hotel lobby to make the call. Tony just makes the phone call exactly when Swann is considering leaving his flat. As expected, Margot gets up, enters the living room area, and awnsers the phone. When she does, the plan goes terribly wrong: Swann attacks her from behind with Tony all the while listening in to what is going on over the phone. But Margot turns out to be rather strong and eventually stabs Swann in the back with the scissors that are left on the desk. He falls backwards to the floor, right onto the scissors, and is dead at once. In his panic, Tony tells his sobbing wife not to touch or do anything until he has come home, which he hurriedly does.Clearly nervous, Tony has to work fast now if he wants to come up with an new plan to kill Margot. He soon realizes he can make it look as if Margot had been blackmailed by Swann, that he came to her flat in person and that she actually let him in with the intention of murdering him (rather than killing him in self-defense). After calling the police and sending Margot back to bed, he plants Mark's letter on Swann (to make it appear that he was the one who sent blackmail letters to Margot), finds the latch key on Swann and puts it back in Margot's handbag, and burns the scarf that Swann used, replacing it with one of Margot's stockings. He hides the twin stocking on the desk, but intentionally "accidentally" uncovers it for the police to find (making it look as though Margot inflicted the bruises by herself). Finally, Tony tells Margot to deny that he told her not to call the police. Although he tells her that it will lessen the police suspicion, it has the opposite effect, making it appear as though she avoided calling the police.Eventually, the police establish that Swann came in through the hall door rather than the French windows leading into the garden, as his shoes are not dirty. After an intermission, we are introduced to Inspector Hubbard (John Williams), who questions the Wendices and appears to believe the evidence that Tony planted, eventually becoming highly suspicious of Margot. The movie cuts immediately to the trial scene where she is convicted and sentenced to be hanged, thus accomplishing Tony's plan after all.However, there are two things Tony has not reckoned with: (a) that Swann replaced the key under the stair carpet immediately after using it to open the door and, accordingly, the key he takes out of the dead man's pocket is the key to Swann's own flat; and (b) that getting rid of £1,000 in cash (the money he would have paid to Swann, which he does not have to now that he is dead) by making many purchases is a conspicuous thing to do and bound to be investigated by the police (which it is, although Tony is not aware of this).Several months later, on the day before Margot's scheduled execution, Mark visits Tony to propose a very unusual thing to him. Rather than seeing his wife hanged, he could come up with a completely new story, confess at the last minute that he hired Swann to kill his wife and save her life by going to prison for some years himself instead. Coincidentally, Mark has come up with exactly what Tony actually did. Mark argues that during Margot's trial, all arguments revolved around three things only: (1) Mark's letter found on Swann; (2) the fact that no key was found on Swann (and that there was no forced entry either); and (3) Margot's stocking. Mark argues that all this could be altered, and that Tony could put all the blame on himself, claiming that it was he who had done all that.Then Inspector Hubbard arrives at the flat again, purportedly to ask Tony about the money he has been spending lately. This is when Mark discovers Tony's attaché case filled with the remaining one pound notes and presents it to Hubbard when he inquires to Tony about the suitcase. Pressed for an answer, Tony manages a final impromptu lie in front of both Mark and Inspector Hubbard: he tells them this is the money Margot had ready when she met Swann but that she changed her mind and killed him instead of paying him off. The inspector accepts this explanation and dismisses Mark's theory... or so it seems.In fact, the inspector, who has not given up the case yet, remains suspicious of Tony and sets a trap. He borrows the key from Margot's handbag which is kept in prison and goes to Tony's flat while Tony is not home. He finds that it does not fit the lock. He discovers that the key actually fits Swann's door. After some searching, he discovers the actual key under the carpet.Then the inspector uses his final trick. He visits Tony to ask some questions and when he leaves, he deliberately takes Tony's raincoat instead of his own. (The raincoats are apparently very similar and so are the keys.) Tony also leaves his flat. Inspector Hubbard secretly enters the flat, using the key from the raincoat, telephones the prison and asks that Margot be released. Margot, who does not understand why she has been released, goes home, and finds that the key in her handbag does not fit the lock. Hubbard waits some time, he wants to find out whether she knows the hiding place under the stair carpet. She does not, so that clears her of any suspicion. The inspector opens the door for her. Hubbard tells a colleague to take the handbag back to the police station. Hubbard and Margot then wait for Tony's homecoming.When Tony comes home he realizes that he cannot get inside: he is wearing Hubbard's raincoat with Hubbard's key. Hubbard and Margot, along with Mark, hide themselves inside and do not open the door. Then Tony remembers that he had been told to collect Margot's belongings from the police station, so he goes there to fetch her handbag, with the key. When he comes home he finds that the key from Margot's handbag - actually Swann's - does not fit into the lock. Tony starts thinking what could have happened. When he takes the key from under the stair carpet he gives himself away.Tony enters the room to find Margot and the inspector, and Mark too. He realizes he's been found out and congratulates the inspector. After appearing surprised that he has finally been found out, Tony then offers everyone a drink, acting very casual, as tears begin to stream down his wife's face. The last scene is of the inspector, acting in a manner that shows he's proud of himself, as he combs his mustache as he makes a phone call to inform Scotland Yard that they have caught Tony.

Tags: suspenseful, murder, claustrophobic

Review:
Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), an ex-tennis player, unhappily married to Margot (Grace Kelly), correctly guesses that she has been cheating, with Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings).
"Dial M for Murder" was the first of Hitchcock's films with Kelly, and a movie where once again the Master returns to a familiar theme: the perfect murder.The movie is the story of Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), a former tennis player married to the beautiful and wealthy Margot (Grace Kelly) and living in an nice apartment in London.
However, bad luck and a sudden change of events will test Tony's plan's infallibility as, just as Mark points out, human action can originate flaws even in the most perfectly devised plan.Like most Hitchcock's films, "Dial M for Murder" was an adaptation of another art-form, this time a popular play by Frederick Knott.
An interesting feature of the movie is that oddly, there are no black and white morality in the characters, and it's easy not only to sympathize with Margot (despite she being cheating on her husband) but also to sympathize with Tony (despite he wanting to kill his wife), as the characters are wonderfully developed with very detailed personalities.It seems that Hitchcock's knows that the dialog is the highlight of the play, as he deliberately focuses on his actors and uses an elegant camera-work to frame the whole movie inside the apartment.
Only Robert Cummings seems miscast as Mark Halliday, although a lot of his weak performance could be blamed to Milland, Kelly and Williams overshadowing him with their excellent work.In many ways, "Dial M for Murder" shares many things with "Rope", as not only the two films are based on successful plays, they are also about committing the perfect murder and oddly, they are both "experiments": while "Rope" was conceived as a "movie in one take", "Dial M for Murder" was done as 3-D movie.
Sadly, the interest in 3-D was dying when the film was released, so few theaters carried the movie complete with the gimmick; a real shame, as Hitchcock's use of the technology, unlike most 3-D films of its time, was conceived as a way to enhance the claustrophobia of the Wendices' apartment instead of using it to merely shock the audience with "stuff coming out of the screen" (as seen in for example, "House of Wax").
While not too fond of the gimmick, Hitchcock truly gave it a good and intelligent (albeit subtle) use to it."Dial M for Murder" is probably less celebrated than the Master's most famous movies, the fact that it came out the same years as "Rear Window" (again with Grace Kelly) may have had something to do with it too.
I do wish Hitchcock could have done better with his back-projection unit (an old-fashioned, jarring trait he still hadn't grown out of by "Marnie" some 10 years later) and I occasionally found the constant too frivolous background music an intrusion, but it's well paced throughout, helped considerably by an on-form cast.Ray Milland is excellent in a kind of darker Cary Grant type persona, Grace Kelly (who'd want to murder her?) goes convincingly from loveliness to wretchedness while it's pleasing to see Robert Cumming to the fore, recalled by Hitch for the first time in over a decade ("since "Saboteur" in 1942).
The actors playing the would be murderer and nosey police inspector are just fine too.About those flourishes..., perhaps the most famous being the changing spotlight on Grace Kelly's doomed face as her trial is condensed into just a few terse minutes and of course the murder scene itself, even if one can't imagine her extended stabbing gesture being strong enough to cut through Swann's jacket far less kill him stone dead, but I also enjoyed the raised tracking shot looking down on Milland as he explains his plot to Swann and particularly the parting shadows of lovers Cumming and Kelly at Milland's unexpected approach.Yes, it's old fashioned Hollywood movie-making, but it's old-fashioned Hollywood movie-making at its best and in my opinion an unjustly overlooked effort from the Master..
Starring Grace Kelly, Ray Milland, and Robert Cummings, it is simply one of Hitchcock's finest movies of all-time.
Ray Milland and Grace Kelly deliver very good performances and surprisingly enough, Robert Cummings does a rather good job in his role of Mark Halliday, the American crime novel writer who accidentally stumbles on the answer.
Undoubtedly, "Dial M for Murder" has a clever plot: Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) plans "the perfect murder" to do away with his wife Margot (Grace Kelly), who cheated on him with novelist Mark (Robert Cummings).
The witty urbanity of the dialogue goes without saying (hem), the acting is stagily impeccable, and the direction by Hitchcock is limited by the small sets but masterful for all that.Cold Ray Milland plans and sets up the murder of his demure but faithless wife Grace Kelly by a virtual stranger who is urged on by the stick of exposure of his misdeeds and the carrot of GBP1,000 in used notes.
Surprisingly this is a lesser-known Hitchcock film but still stands up today as an exciting thriller full of twists and turns.Ray Milland is excellent as ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice who decides to commit the perfect murder of his wife (Grace Kelly) when he learns of her affair with Robert Cummings (who isn't given much to do).
Though it has to be said, Kelly's helpless female turn does not help in this regard either.Hitchcock's skill here is to totally involve the viewer in the labyrinthine plot involving keys, telephone calls and stockings so that at the end of the film you haven't even noticed that virtually all the scenes are in one room.If you like clever, wordy films with a touch of humour then I recommend `Dial M For Murder'.
"Dial M for Murder" will be remembered as Hitchcock's first color film and the first of three thrillers he had made with Grace Kelly, the future Princess of Monaco, in the prime of her beauty and her talent.
Ray Milland (Tony Wendice) is a surprisingly sympathetic villain (which is perhaps not surprising from the actor with talent, charm, and charisma that equal and remind a lot of both Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart) who knows about his wife cheating and decides to teach her a lesson by plotting a very clever murder which will make him a sole heir to her money (she is a wealthy one in the family).
Now it is up to seasoned and shrewd inspector Hubbard (John Williams) to find the crucial piece of evidence and to solve the case.As always with Hitchcock, his directing is impeccable, the camera rarely leaves Wendice's apartment but the film is never claustrophobic which is the case for many plays' adaptation.
I would not call "Dial M for Murder" my favorite Hitchcock's film but it is enjoyable, clever, and witty thriller with the interesting twists, outstanding performances, and more than one truly memorable scenes..
Meanwhile a Police Inspector (John Williams who won the 1953 Tony Award to recreate his stage role of Chief Inspector Hubbard) investigates the deeds .Top-notch suspense film of a man plotting spouse's killing , full of sustained intrigue , thrills , a few interesting twists and entertainment .
In London, the wealthy Margot Mary Wendice (Grace Kelly) had a brief love affair with the American writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) one year ago while her husband and professional tennis player Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) is traveling in a tennis tour.
But there is no perfect crime, and things do not work as planned by Tony."Dial M for Murder" is one of the best thrillers of cinema history, with a theatrical story supported by an excellent screenplay and top-notch performances.
Ray Milland is superb in the role of the Machiavellian and cynical Tony Wendice; Grace Kelly is extremely gorgeous and sweet in the role of a wife in the 50's; and John Williams is great in the role of the efficient and fussy Chief Inspector Hubbard.
And yet the film is a must-see: not only because every Hitchcock film is rich in style and meaning, but for two cherishable performances from Ray Milland and John Williams; for an extraordinary, abstract courtroom scene; and for a remarkable play with theatrical metaphors.Robin Wood sees many Hitchcock films as analyses of marriage, and DIAL M FOR MURDER is no exception.
In this case, it was Millland, although he was a bit cocky.Note: It's a sad comment that Hitchcock, who didn't seem to have a lot of principles, made Robert Cummings - who was an adulterer in this film having an affair with Milland's wife Grace Kelly - into a "good guy." Nobody in the film challenged him on what he was doing.
However, there is no such thing as the perfect murder.Although it is very much a stage play rather than a film, this still works well as a thriller due to solid (if unspectacular) performances and good direction.
Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) is an aging tennis pro who learns that his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly as Margot) has a lover (Bob Cummings as Mark).
One of Alfred Hitchcock's best-known films, "Dial M For Murder" is a carefully crafted and absorbing cat-and-mouse game that keeps the viewer's attention all the way until the end.
The very simple settings and small cast focus all of our attention on the battle of wits a between a scheming husband, played with style by Ray Milland, and the rest of the characters.The story begins when retired tennis pro Tony Wendice (Milland) decides to eliminate his rich, unfaithful wife Margot.
An aging tennis pro named Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) plans his wife's murder with the help of an old acquaintance.Wendice is charming, debonair, and intelligent, a man with great foresight who constructs his crime in meticulous detail.
I like some 1950s movies - those of Billy Wilder are great, but I find Hitchcock gets stiff performances from his casts, uses preposterous plots and in 'Dial M for Murder', there's a surprising absence of action - just a lot of talk.
Still, he DID manage to use it in an effective way.The acting is almost completely great; Milland is fantastic--very smooth and suave as the villain; Kelly is just visually stunning and also gives out a good performance; John Williams is just terrific as an inspector trying to figure the crime out.
The audience knows from the start the entire plan for "perfect murder" and follows the main character at every step of the improvised plan B, so there is no room for tension or speculation.The movie should have been opened by the scene of Grace Kelly answering the phone and the mysterious man attacking her from behind.
Written by: Frederick Knott (from his play), Starring: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson.Perhaps Hitchcock's talkiest thriller deals with a former tennis star (Milland) who hatches a pitch-perfect plan to kill his wife (Kelly).
Yet when she kills her hit-man attacker, Milland must go to great lengths to cover his tracks from his wife's lover and an investigator.Frederick Knott adapted his play for the screen, which is perfect fodder for Hitchcock's suspenseful interest in murder and wrong accusations.
Watching it in 2017- a 63 year old film and being mesmerized by the concept, theme, acting, directing, and all the stuff of this brilliantly fabulous movie.All the actors (Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, John Williams) were absolute class on their respective characters.
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.
Tony Wendice has everything you might want in life: A mantel full of sports trophies, a cushy lifestyle, lots of booze, a rich and attractive wife, and a foolproof plan for killing her so he can inherit all her money.We shouldn't like this guy, yet we do, because of a script by playwright Frederick Knott that presents Tony as the victim of his wife's adultery, a performance by Ray Milland that presents Tony as a charming and able foil for many cruel twists of fate, and subtle direction by Alfred Hitchcock that invites us the audience to feel closer to Tony than we do to his victims.The three elements work together at key moments.
It's all so genteel and very British, the completely American setting of the Michael Douglas film, A Perfect Murder was the last thing from perfect.Kelly's fallen for Bob Cummings, she realizes Milland is a wastrel, a word I wish would come back into use.
One of Alfred Hitchcock's best movies,and one of the best movies of all time.Dial M for Murder is indeed about the perfect murder.What I personally like about Hitchcock's movies is the simplicity of the places where the movies are shot.In Rear Window is just a flat and a garden,in Lifeboat is,well just a lifeboat and so on.In Dial M for Murder the whole action happens in just one room,but the simplicity of the decor is compensated with the complex story.Another thing that makes Hitchcock's movies so awesome is that you never now for sure how the movie will end,until it ends.This adds a great tension to the movie that keeps the viewer in his chair until the end of the movie.All in all,the plot,the actors and of course the Director make Dial M for Murder a great mystery thriller that should,in my opinion,be rated as one of the best movies of all time and stay in the IMDb 250 top somewhere in the top 10 in the beginning of the list,not at the bottom..
A simple murder story about an aging tennis player who's plotting to have his wife murdered, Dial M For Murder was adapted from a popular play by Fredrick Knott, and while expertly directed by Alfred Hitchcock, one senses that the man's heart isn't in it.
Although Hitchcock's version of the popular play was considered a shocker in its day, repetition of the story in so many versions has made the story itself seem rather tame: a husband, angered by his wife's affair and in desperate need of money, blackmails an acquaintance to murder her--but his plans go awry when his wife kills her attacker in self-defense.Both Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings, as the faithless wife and her mild-mannered lover, give enjoyable performances, but the real success of the film is Ray Milland, who brings a slightly oily charm to his role of murderous husband.
In "Dial M For Murder", though, Hitch puts the mystery itself at the forefront of the plot, with the suspense coming in the detective work needed to solve the puzzle.For a basic plot summary, the entire story focuses around three four characters: a jealous husband (Ray Milland) who plots a murder scheme to kill his wife (Grace Kelly) for cheating on him with another man (Robert Cummings), as well as the police investigator (John Williams) who tries to put everything together.In one key way, this film is way ahead of its time (par for the course with Hitch, of course) in that (like the later Columbo TV series) it actually shows the murder right up front, thus shifting the focus from "whodunnit" to "who figures it out correctly".
The plan is worked out in fine detail but it goes wrong on the night when the would-be murderer is killed by his intended victim.Dial M for Murder is another film which perfectly showcases the variety of styles Alfred Hitchcock was able to turn his hand to in order to tell a suspenseful tale.
A great movie about a murder plot executed by perfection by Alfred Hitchcock with clever and interesting dialogue.
"Dial M for Murder" is about Tony Wendice, played by Ray Milland, a professional tennis player who wants his wife, Margot, played by Grace Kelly, dead.
Based on a play by Frederick Knott, Dial M for Murder follows a standard formula of a Hitchcock thriller of this time, like Rear Window and Rope, claustrophobic films about murder.
Set in London Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) plans to commit the perfect murder by blackmailing a man (Anthony Dawson) he use to know a university to kill his wife, Margot (Grace Kelly).
Everything is clear and easy to follow from the first scene to the last and yet it's far more engaging and tense than anything I've watched recently from the present day.The film benefits three outstanding performances from Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings as the main characters.
Another top-notch thriller from the master of suspense, 'Dial M for Murder' is one of Hitchcock's smaller films but still has all the hallmarks of quality we expect from him.The film is based on a stage play and, similar to 'Rope'(1948), has all the action (bar one scene) set in a single location - the living room of a London flat.
Ray Milland and Grace Kelly are both superb, probably the best performances I have seen from a Hitchcock film together with Anthony Perkins.
An example of one of the most brilliant storytelling films I have ever seen, Dial M For Murder is cemented in the heart of this Hitchcock fan, whether he would like that or not.Margot Wendice (Grace Kelly) is the beautiful socialite wife of tennis great Tony Wendice (Ray Milland).
****SPOILERS**** One of the Master's-Alfred Hitchcock- most confusing efforts in having the attempted murder victim Margot Wendice, Grace Kelly, indited tried and convicted in murdering the person who tried to murder her C.A "Come and Get it" Swann, Anthony Dawson, who was hired or better yet blackmailed by her husband Tony, Ray Milland, to do her in for her cheating on him.
Dial M for Murder is mainly set in one apartment in London but its obvious this is a film set in California.During the opening minutes we realise dastardly Ray Milland has made elaborate plans to kill his wife, Grace Kelly who has been having an affair with a crime writer.