| Courtney Kowalke |
Image sourced from The Blonde at the Film
Dial M for Murder plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, February 2nd, through Tuesday, February 4th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
I lived in my last apartment for five years and ten months. When I was allowed to work from home at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, my apartment was the center of my universe. I got out plenty, taking long walks and bike rides and drives around the city. Still, every day spent in my living area, which I jokingly referred to as my TV room-slash-dining room-slash-gym-slash-home office. Every night was spent in my bedroom, and I probably would have gone stir-crazy if that hadn’t been separate from the living room. The space was my home. It was entirely mine to fill and decorate as I pleased. It looked like me and felt like me, and I loved it.
Still, it got claustrophobic. I started dreading going home at the end of walks or drives. Since I couldn’t eat out as much, I was in a perpetual state of washing dishes by hand in the evenings. All the books and movies and craft supplies were mine and had been used and perused dozens of times. I grew sick of seeing the same clothes in my closet, the same food items in my fridge. Slowly but steadily, my apartment and I turned against each other.
I think any place we stay too long in is bound to go bad. It’s a universal experience, getting sick of your surroundings, and it can happen to anyone anywhere at any time. Naturally, The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, is not afraid to mine that anxiety for his art.
Being trapped in your own home is not the main conflict of Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954). The plot revolves around Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) who decides to murder his wife Margot (Grace Kelly) to inherit her wealth. Tony’s perfect crime goes awry, however, when Margot kills the attacker Tony hired. Tony pivots to framing Margot for committing premeditated murder, and Margot’s lover, Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), and Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams—not the composer) must race to clear her name.
Fittingly, the feeling of the walls closing in on the characters is in the background. Apart from a couple of exterior shots and a courtroom cutaway scene, Dial M for Murder’s 106-minute runtime is spent entirely in the Wendice’s flat, mainly the sitting room.
The film’s setup started as an extension of its form. Dial M for Murder began as a stage play written by Frederick Knott (who adapted his own work as a screenplay for Hitchcock). It’s a minimal show, carried by its dialogue and the mystery of how Tony’s plans might unravel. There aren’t any elaborate scene changes. The play is a popular production, and while most adaptations stick to the same stage layout—a front-facing sitting room with a door on one side and a tall curtained window on the other side—every company puts their own spin on the set. I became especially enamored with the staging for the 2017 in-the-round production at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England, pictured here:
Image sourced from Bum on a Seat
Hitchcock continues the tradition. I imagine he could have requested more variation and scene changes since using multiple locations is an advantage film adaptations have over stage adaptations. Hitchcock, however, keeps all the action in the sitting room of the Wendice’s flat. To prevent the audience from tiring of this one enclosed space, he deploys experimental camera angles. About fifteen minutes into the movie, the camera switches to an overhead shot as Tony walks through the flat, showing and describing how he wants the scene of the crime to look to his old friend-turned-hired gun Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson). This allows Tony and Swann to play more in the space, to walk and talk and adjust the drapes or the doormat instead of sitting face-to-face as they had been for the several minutes prior.
Hitchcock also utilizes some unique angles within the set while characters are sitting around conversing. He’s fond of shooting his players from behind, over the back of the sofa when two of them are seated on it. There are also some camera angles I wasn’t fond of, notably regarding this table lamp that kept reappearing. This lamp is in the center of the screen when Tony is propositioning Swann and fills the right half of the screen when Tony is trying to get Margot to stay in on the night he wants her killed. Just from an aesthetic point of view, I think the lamp is quite ugly. I don’t like how it draws focus from the actors on screen. Every time it is front-and-center, I wish I could move it out of the way. That said, the lamp’s appearances are infrequent enough that it didn’t ruin the movie for me, and I do appreciate Hitch tried something different. I love dialogue, but even in my opinion, too many stationary talking heads filmed in exactly the same way can grow tedious.
Image sourced from The Blonde at the Film
Hitchcock was constrained by how and what he could shoot in the apartment itself, which deftly illustrates the feeling of the walls closing in on you. The home is a trap. There is nowhere else to go. It’s your home. You built your life here, and you might die here. There is comfort and familiarity, but there is no guarantee you can escape if need be. There is no guarantee of safety outside of your home either, but being harmed or killed in the place you live feels like a deeper betrayal. It hurts on a deeper level when something you cherish and trust turns on you.
The feeling of being trapped in a physical location is a great illustration of Margot’s mindset during Dial M for Murder as well. Within the first five minutes, she is shown cheating on Tony with Mark. Margot was trying to escape her marriage even before Tony made her life a living hell. She has fallen out of love with Tony, but she’s too afraid to leave him. It’s comfortable (before the attempted murder, at least), but it’s killing Margot. It’s literally the home they built together giving her cabin fever. Nothing has changed except her feelings toward her husband, but that changes everything.
Fortunately, change is a constant in life and in well-written fiction. Last summer, I moved to a new apartment, one that allows pets and allowed me to get the dog I had been dreaming of for years. My new place is similar to the old one—the layout is nearly identical, and I kept all my same furniture and flatware and tchotchkes. I’m in a different place, though, both physically and mentally. Likewise, Margot is in a different place by the end of Dial M for Murder. The film ends with her in the Wendice’s apartment, but Margot isn’t tied to Tony anymore. Margot never physically leaves the building, but at least now she can. You can sense Margot’s relief when Tony asks if she would like a drink before he is taken to jail, when she takes a moment to consider what she really does want then. Margot escaped before her home became her tomb, and having the freedom to choose what comes next makes those walls seem small enough to climb over.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon