DIAL M FOR MURDER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 30

DIAL M FOR MURDER

(Warner Bros.) OR an acknowledged master ""of suspense-and his most jaundiced critics would concede that Alfred Hitchcock has long since graduated cum laudeDial M for Murder looked like the perfect set-up. The crime is not only premeditated, the premeditation itself is Part of the story. We learn in advance the motives and the method-we witness the subversion of the agent or accomplice; we are privy to the details of execution, the precise timetable, the false clues, the alibis; we observe the unsuspecting victim and find ourselves breathing a little faster (and not, let me hasten to add, simply because it is Miss Grace Kelly). Then we get it all over again, with variations, as the plan goes into operation. By the time we reached the act of violence itself, I should heve been gibbering in the aisle. But I wasn’t. and I’m not quite sure whether to blame myself, the cast, or

the old Maestro. Perhaps we were all slightly culpable. Undoubtedly, it would have helped if I had known nothing at all of the story before I went.to the theatre. When you know what’s coming it is as difficult to achieve the required state of suspended disbelief as it is to tickle the sole of your own foot-though it is possible to be forewarned and disarmed if a first-class director is on his mettle, as I noticed in The Wages of Fear. Dial M for Murder, however, is not really Hitchcock at his best. There are plenty of tricks--the camera, as usual, snoops all over the place pointing out the clues and presenting them, where necessary, in close-up-but I looked in vain for the kind of inspired shot and the exciting intercutting, that gave an edge to Strangers on a Train. Robert Burks, incidentally, was associated with Hitchcock both in that earlier film and in the present one as director of photography. He is a good craftsman, and considering that 90 per cent of the film is shot in a living-room barely large enough to swing a cast in. he does what could be fairly if unoriginally described as a good 4ob. And the cast? I thought that Ray Milland smiled too much, even for a a

villain, and that Robert Cummings played Mark Halliday with rather more naivety that the part called for-after all, ha, had had some experience in double-dealing. Miss Kelly, on the other hand, made it clear that she was hired for more than her posh voice, though the star of the show, to my way of thinking, was John Williams (whom you may remember as Sabrina’s chauffeur father). As the Inspector who callsand keeps on calling-his_ effective underplaying lent lustre to the Force and earned my respectful attentions. On the whole, despite the might-have-beens, this was a satisfying thriller. Even pot-boiler Hitchcock is still better than average.