Dial M for Murder Movie Information

Your Rating

• This movie was an epic failure
• This movie was horrible
• This movie was not good
• This movie was average
• This movie was okay
• This movie was good
• This movie was great
• This movie was incredible

Movie Information

Overall Rank: 234

Average Rating: 3.2/4

# of Ratings: 254

Theatrical Release Date: 05/29/1954

Language: English

Genre: Mystery, Thriller

MPAA Rating: PG

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Actors: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson, Patrick Allen

Plot: A man develops the perfect plan to kill his wife. When it fails, he is left with his alternate plan...

Logan D. McCoy - wrote on 07/26/2020

A movie of small-scale but ingenious craft, "Dial M for Murder" works like a finely oiled machine.

Gabe - wrote on 02/01/2017

A good mid-tier Hitchcock film. Ray Milland is the star of this film as a husband who tries to come up with the perfect crime to kill his wife. Watching him, not just his actions, but his facial expressions, you can see how hard he is trying to make this crime go right. Hitchcock does a great job of giving us all of the clues and letting us trying to figure out how Milland was going to get caught.

Unknown - wrote on 11/05/2013

Transfered from a stage play, and initially shot in 3D, this is one of Hitchcock's more unique entries into his latter filmography. I find a lack of his usual directing flair present, as is his tight grip on tension. I wan't involved with any of the characters. However, the dilemma created by the failure of the murder is mischievously interesting.

MovieAddict
Producer

Another one that blew me away!

MovieAddict - wrote on 03/29/2013

Ex-tennis pro Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) has everything a man might want in life: A mantel full of sports’ trophies, a cushy lifestyle, lots of booze, a rich and attractive younger wife Margot (Grace Kelly) and the perfect plan to commit murder. Tony had planned the murder carefully for a long time having discovered Margo has an affair with American author Mark Holliday (Robert Cummings). Fearful that if she leaves him he will be broke he decides to commit the perfect murder. He blackmails small time crook Charles Alexander Swann, (Anthony Dawson) an old college acquaintance to kill her but the plot goes disastrously wrong when Margot miraculously survives the attack by grabbing a pair of scissors as her assassin is strangling her.

Tony's scheme appears to have misfired, but he is …

Daniel Corleone
Movie God

Dial M for Murder

Daniel Corleone - wrote on 02/01/2012

An underrated gem of a thriller without the blood and crazy antagonist. Tony Wendice (Milland) is an ex-professional tennis player discovered about American crime-fiction writer named Mark Halliday (Cummings) and his wife’s activities. A colleague of Tony plans a murder with Charles Alexander Swann (Dawson). Margot (Kelly), Tony’s wife, gets strangled but manages to escape. Chief Inspector Hubbard (Williams) investigates the death of a man in the couple’s place.

The directors’ ability to provide humor and build tension at the same time in a scene is unblemished. Score was thrilling and the artists were convincing. The film’s strength is its camera direction and screenplay. A few lines from the film: Tony – “People don't commit murder on credit.” Hubbard – …

SIngli6
Producer

Masterful Suspense

SIngli6 - wrote on 04/05/2011

The virulent ferocity of this film's suspense still surprises me just thinking about it now, considering how the film reads so much like a stage-play (well, it WAS a stage play), staying mostly in one location and being incredibly dialogue-heavy, but then that was Alfred Hitchcock's gift. Great suspense is watching the perpetrator of some botched crime desperately try to 'cover their tracks', but masterful suspense is watching two people with goals virulently adverse to each other trying to achieve while you, the viewer, irrationally want both to succeed. Hitchcock created masterful suspense from a dialogue heavy stage-play. This is why Hitchcock was, and still is, THE suspense auteur, and this is why 'Dial 'M' for Murder' is one of his greatest works.