Dial M for Murder of Hitchcock

This is a police thriller that requires skill and ingenuity to unravel a serious plot that, paradoxically, will prove once again that there is no such thing as a perfect crime.

It carries the curse of a so-called dramatic film, in this case because much of the action takes place in the "living room" of Wendy's flat.

Of course, no one can deny the above, and the weight of dialogue does loom large in this disturbing film, although visual planning is crucial to some memorable scenes.

However, dialogue is not an exclusive element of the drama, nor does the concentration of space reduce the scene.

The film also manages to maintain a strong unity of place without being dramatic. Well, the filmmakers have already done that with "Quick Alert", "Castaway" and "Rope".

Tony Windis (Ray Milland) is a cold, calculating retired tennis player who plans to murder his beautiful, wealthy wife (Grace Kelly) because he suspects her of being unfaithful, but mostly because he wanted to inherit her enormous fortune as she was going through a financial crisis.

To carry out his gruesome plan, he blackmailed an old college friend and convinced him to break into the house and kill his wife while he was away, which he used as an alibi.

The dramatic aspect was quickly sidelined in the development of "Dial M for Murder", an adaptation of Frederic Nott's play with a plot adapted by the author himself that enhanced the more sordid elements of the plot.

His idea is to depict an evil plot on the surface in Tom Windsor (the excellent Ray Milland), as he smiles and celebrates his wife Margot (the lovely and elegant Grace Kelly, an unconfessed adulteress) for every escapade with her lover Mark. Halliday (played by a sober Robert Cummings).

One character worth mentioning is the inspector, played by John Williams, an actor who played the role in the theatre and a regular in Hitchcock's later TV series.

After watching and listening to the various versions of the plot presented to us, the police and detective mechanics, combined with random whimsy, finally fit all the pieces in the right place, despite the reasonable and moral doubts the audience has to decipher along the way.