Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies from September through November.

This week we watched Dial M for Murder (1954), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

This was a great follow up to Rear Window and I’m so glad Erin suggested both of these. I’ve been wanting to watch Dial M for Murder for years but just never got around to it with all the other great movies out there to watch.

Now that I’ve watched it, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite Hitchcock movie of all time but I really did enjoy it. In some ways I thought things fell together a little too easily at points in this movie but the way they fell into place made me enjoy it – if that makes any sense. It might not make sense if you haven’t watched the movie but if you have then you probably know what I mean.

Here we have another Hitchcock movie with one of his favorite actresses, Grace Kelly. The movie also stars Ray Milland and Robert Cummings.

Dial M for Murder, based on a very popular play and screenplay by Frederick Knott, was made before Rear Window but both movies released at the same time. It was this movie that made Hitchcock decide he wanted Kelly for Rear Window.

First a little bit about the plot of the film. Tony Wendice is a retired professional British tennis player who is married to his socialite wife, Margot, who has had an affair in the past with American crime-fiction writer Mark Halliday.

Margot doesn’t think Tony knows about the affair. She burned all the letters she received from Mark when she broke it off with him. All the letters except one. She kept that one in her handbag and though we are never definitely sure what was in the letter, we know it was something that meant a lot to her.

Mark has now come to London for a visit and wants to see both Margot and Tony. They are set to go out to a performance together that night but Tony bails at the last minute and tells  them to go on without him and have some fun.

Tony’s eagerness to stay home is what first clued me in that something a bit criminal was about to go down and go down it does.

Tony blackmails a former college classmate to kill Margot. Tony jokes with Mark later when he and Margot come home about how he, Mark, would know more about how to murder a person since he’s a crime writer.

Margo suggests that he and Tony write a book together after Mark is looking through all their clippings of all they did while Tony was a tennis pro and suggests Mark write a book.

“Yes, Mark, will you provide me with the perfect murder?” Tony asks.

Mark quips back, that his books focus less on the detecting and more on the crime itself. “I usually put myself in the criminal’s shoes and then ask what do I do next.”

Mark laughs and says he thinks he can plan a murder on his own but knows that in real life mistakes can be made. It’s not the same as it is in the book, he reminds Tony.

Tony is cocky though. He seems to think he’s a murder-planning master.

Foreshadow much?

My husband says that Hitchcock loved Grace Kelly for his movies and when I looked online that was indeed true. While I thought I had once read that Hitchcock had a strange obsession with Kelly, The Husband says it is more like he felt she was like his muse. That weird obsession thing was with another actress – Tippi Hedren.

To Hitchcock, Kelly was simply extremely beautiful and talented and he felt like there was no actress like her.

According to Offscreen.com, Hitchcock told Donald Spoto, who wrote his biography, that “The subtlety of Grace’s sexuality —her elegant sexiness— appealed to me. That may sound strange, but I think that Grace conveyed so much more sex than the average movie sexpot. With Grace, you had to find out – you had to discover it.”

Before concluding production on Dial M for Murder Hitchcock was already planning his next film – with Kelly in the lead. That next film was Rear Window.

Like Rear Window, Kelly wears some amazing outfits in this movie, by the way. The one that stands out for me is the red dress in the beginning. What a stunner.

I like what the writer on Offscreen said about the dress and the relationship of her outfits to scenes in the movie:

“Hitchcock starts the opening sequence at a breakfast table where Kelly is dressed demurely in a beige dressing gown; she reads a notice about the arrival of her lover on the Queen Mary; the ship arrives in dock; in seconds she is costumed in a red dress, embracing him in the flat where hours earlier she breakfasted with her supposedly unsuspecting husband. They are in the classic London flat but the picture presented is quite different as a result of clever writing, editing and colour coding. It also played on Hitchcock’s private perception of Kelly: he nicknamed her “the snow princess.”

I thought it was interesting that it was Cary Grant who told Hitchcock about the play version of Dial M for Murder, which debuted in 1952. Grant saw himself as the potential wife-killer, something Offscreen.com says Hitchcock always wanted Grant to play. Unfortunately Grant’s agents asked for way too much money so Hitchcock turned to Milland.

As a huge fan of Cary Grant I can honestly say I could see him playing the part Milland played, but Milland pulled it off in more dramatic fashion than I think Cary might have. Sometimes I have trouble seeing Cary in a dramatic role because even when I know he’s trying to be serious I think of his more playful movies and struggle to focus on him being the “bad guy.”

Milland, by the way, had won an Academy Award in 1945 for The Lost Weekend, so Hitchcock felt he was a good second pick.

Hitchcock chose not to change the play when he made the film and was quoted as saying this: “You buy a play for its construction. It’s the construction that makes it a hit. If you change that you’re ruining the very thing you bought. Just shoot the play.”

I thought this was ironic since he did change the endings of films that were based on novels he bought the rights to.

Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it? Is it among your favorite Alfred Hitchcock films?

I was looking through a list of Alfred Hitchcock films the other day and I realized there are a ton I have never seen. I hope to make a marathon of his movies sometime soon.

I found Dial M For Murder on Tubi, by the way.

You can read Erin’s impression of the movie here:https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/10/24/comfy-cozy-cinema-dial-m-for-murder/

Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a Halloween wildcard but Erin and I are both watching Practical Magic if you want to join us.

Here is our complete list of movies that we’ve watched and will be watching.

You can find links to my impressions of the ones we’ve watched so far here.

If you want to link up your own post about this movie, or even other ones, you can do so at this link:

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