From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin –Alfred Hitchcock’s “Dial M For Murder”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder.

DVD Review

Dial M For Murder, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly. Robert Cummings, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Brothers, 1954

Hey, we are all adults here, right? So why would one ex-tennis bum, Tony (play be Ray Milland), who in the course of his professional tennis career probably had more love affairs at the courts with an off-hand wealthy matron or two than one can shake a stick at, take umbrage when his wealthy wife, Margot (played by Grace Kelly), had a little dalliance of her own. A dalliance with an off-hand smart crime novel writer a la Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, Mark (played by Robert Cummings), to boot just in order to muddy up the waters.

Well that is the plot line here in the film under review, Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder, as an ill-disposed hubby Tony finds out about the little illicit tryst and plots revenge, revenge big time. Oh no, not like some smart guy, tennis bum or not, would do by raking dear wifey through the 1950s divorce courts with good old boy Mark as correspondent. No he had to go for the big M, Mas in murder. So naturally he needed to over-plan some nefarious plot by bringing a ne’er do well (English version, naturally) in to bungle the damn thing. Bungle it big time as Margot wound up killing said unjust assassin in self-defense.

But that little turn of events became our boy Tony’s opening as he framed said wifey big time, or almost. The line-up of circumstantial he led the peelers to was just too perfect, almost. On the evidence even a half-baked lawyer should have been able to get Margot out of a murder one charge and a hard look at the gallows but it took old Mark and his dime store crime investigative skills to set things right in the end.

Note: Forget all that stuff about evidence, about wifely adulterous affairs, about a cad named Tony, and a house-wreaker named Mark. Why on this good green earth would anyone in their right minds touch one hair on the head of one Grace Kelly. I was too young to appreciate her beauty when I was kid as I was strictly into women (oops, girls) with stick shapes and winsome toothy smiles but some women in this world are just not built to face the cruel executioner’s noose. I probably just balled all of this up so let me put it this way as I have on other occasions when dealing with Grace Kelly films. One story had it that her husband, Prince Rainer of Monaco, a man not known to show much public emotion, openly wept at her funeral. Now I know why.