Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classy entertainment, 31 Aug 2007
Quite why anyone would want to murder someone as beautiful as Grace Kelly remains a mystery. But that's what smooth Ray Miland plans here as payback for his wife's daliance with an American mystery writer. Effortlessly blackmailing an old colleague into doing the job, Miland provides himself with an alibi for the dirty deed - but things go horribly wrong and the would-be killer ends up dead himself - impailed on a pair of darning scissors when he botches the murder.
From here on in, the outcome of the film hinges on the cleverness of the police to beat Miland from getting away with it. It's all slickly done and marvellously out of date now of course - but Dial M for Murder is yet one more example of Hitchcock's art and skill as a director.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quick Reviews!, 28 Sep 2007
Possible Spoilers
This is a top rate suspense film from Hitchcok featuring many memorable moments, and some very strong performances from Kelly, Milland, and Williams. With a brilliantly executed plot and twisting story, this is one of the most impressively constructed films of the time.
Kelly stars as Margot, an unhappily married woman who has been seeing crime writer Mark behind her husband's back. Her husband Tony is an ex tennis star whose wealth is slowly draining. Mark is an American, and is travelling over to visit the couple in London. However, Tony has known for a year that his wife has been with Mark. Tony concocts an ingenious plan to murder his wife, blackmailing an old college friend into doing it, and getting his wife's money in the process. It is the perfect plan, as Tony believes there is nothing to link him to the murder- a burglary gone wrong while he is not even at the house. However, the murder goes wrong, and Swann, his old friend is killed by Margot in self defence. The police are eventually informed, but not before Tony has come up with an even more impressive plan which will see his wife framed for the murder. Enter the Sherlock Holmes like Inspector Hubbard whose intuition and genius, along with the help of Mark's crime writing paranoia lead to the truth.
There are so many twists in this film that the viewer is completely led in circles by the director. Aside from the brilliantly constructed plot, special mention must go to Williams as Hubbard, whose tongue-in-cheek performance steals every scene he is in. Like Hitchcock, he is in control of the characters and deftly unravels the crime. This should not be overlooked because of Hitchcock's bigger, more familiar hits as this is one of his best.
Not much in the ways of extras on the disk, but a must for Hitchcock fans and one to try for all movie lovers
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mind you, even I didn't guess that at once... , 18 Aug 2008
One of two plays that Hitchock ever adapted for the big screen (Rope was the other), Dial M For Murder isn't one of Hitchcock's true great flims, but it is a very entertaining piece of work.
It relvolves around an elaborate, and perhaps it's TOO elaborate, plot by ex-tennis player Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) to have his wife Margot (played by the exquisite Grace Kelly) killed after she's had an affair with Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings).
Given time constraints, relatively little re-writing was done for the screen which meant that the London setting was left intact as were the British nationality of the characters. This does mean however that the film is very heavy on dialogue, and it does sometimes betray the undoubted cleverness of the plot as being all a little shallow.
Where Hitchcock can excel though is in manipulating the audience's sympathies. Despite her extra-marital affair, we naturally hold our affections with Margot, after all who would want to kill Grace Kelly, but when the action switches in the second half of the film, who hasn't watched and hoped that Tony Wendice, a man who after all is allowing his wife to be executed for a crime she didn't commit, does indeed manage to outwit and outsmart his pursuers? (a trick Hitchcock had used before and would use again).This is helped no end by Millard's performance, at once charming but frightening, funny but reptillian and he's probably the best thing in the movie.
The script is not a great one, it has to be said, but in Hitchcock's expert hands it translates into a great film.
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