"Dial M for Murder" (1954)

To stage a perfect murder is no different from staging a perfect film, and Hitchcock's films signal this tendency toward preemptive regulation. Hitch's Dial M for Murder however is not a perfect film, for reason that it is a film that respects quite seriously the strictures of the play it is based on; a film in short based on a play, and careful not to jazz it up; and the source material is not by any stretch of the imagination a work of consummate craft either. Both are representations of what the film would be if it were a play, and what the play would be if it were a film. Dial M for Murder describes the elements for a perfect murder, which go awry anyway, and so the film suffers the fate of its principal villain: it fails at the completion of the task, at 'perfection'. That said, Dial M for Murder is a film more about the possibility of a perfect film than of its execution; the possibility of which in Hitchcock's mind is analogous to the execution of a murder that leaves no fingerprint. It is a sign of Hitchcock's grand wisdom that he leaves his fingerprints on every piece of evidence littering the crime scene: his signature camera placements, the familiar pans and zooms, the excessive orderliness of the set and the behavioral manner of the characters. In a high empirical style, Hitchcock applies the strictest newtonian rigor on the direction of the set. He has his characters inhabit each room and describe each prop with exquisite detail: in one scene, the villain played by Ray Milland informs the inspecting officer, as he opens the kitchen door for him, "In the kitchen there are bars in the window," and without wishing to rely on the dialogue for this impertinent detail, Hitch has the camera catch for a few seconds the silhouette of bars stained on the wall for cinematic effect. Such attention to a trifle already explained by the dialogue demonstrates not only complete mastery of the set, but a concern for the seamless tailoring of theatrical material with cinematic solutions. When the murder is replayed by the conspirator-blackguards avant la lettre, the camera stations itself from above (as in so many other Hitchcock films during moments of madvillainy and grand conspiracy) and observes them as they perform the murder in their heads, while their bodies walk through the motions and their mouths speak machinations. Hitch does not only want us to know beforehand how the murder is supposed to occur but also how the play is supposed to be performed: we gaze through the camera at an artificial theatre set, a construction which Hitchcock bought complete and unadulterated, and which he is careful not to modify. He is not interested in opposing cinema to theatre, but in bringing theatre convention to fuse with cinematic exploration. We first encounter the film set as a playhouse for iniquitous acts; when the murder finally comes to take place, the suspense builds up, and the playhouse is ruptured by extreme cinematic technique: the infernal light of the fireplace casts malevolent technicolors on the awaiting murderer as he looks out from behind the curtain at the approaching nightgowned Grace Kelly. The struggle that ensues, and the accidents that germinate and multiply, are a direct commentary on the false separation of art from the folly of life: art is beautified by folly when folly anticipates predestination. The theatre artifice is brought to fruition by the film artifice: a perfect murder can take place, precisely because it never does. In art, all manner of skillful consummation is the mere spectre of possibility.