Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
3.5/4
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 …
Rating of
4/4
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 – …
Rating of
4/4
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.
