BEFORE: Linking from "The Paradine Case", Hitchcock once again had a cameo in both films - tonight he plays a man seen walking across the street. What can I say, the guy had range. Also, Gregory Peck was also in the film "How the West Was Won" with James Stewart (last seen in "Anatomy of a Murder")
THE PLOT: Two young men strangle their classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.
AFTER: By starting the film with a murder, and not showing any of the events leading up to it, Hitchcock is cheating a bit here - it's a way to grab the audience's attention, sure, but what about motive, opportunity, character development? Forget it, let's go straight to the strangulation. But since there is no motive, other than committing the "perfect" crime, we're not missing out on anything anyway, right?
But, unfortunately, no murder is ever "perfect" - not unless you can remove all fingerprints, carpet fibers, rope fibers, bruises on the body - and then there's the body itself. You're going to have to deal with it sooner or later, and if you don't, it's going to start stinking up the apartment.
What kind of a person commits murder out of the blue, anyway? Sick, deranged people? Nope, just college boys who want to feel superior, and prove something to their professor (apparently). What you have to remember is that this movie was set in 1948, and people had a lot of weird hobbies back then. As we saw in "Shadow of a Doubt", some people not only read murder mysteries, they spent a lot of time discussing what poisons don't leave traces and which blunt instruments would best be used to bash someone in the head. (I don't know if this was really a valid topic of conversation back then, but that's what Hitchcock would have us believe...)
I will point out that back then they didn't have the internet, or Playboy magazine, or even rock and roll. So, how did they pass the time? Talking about murder, planning murder, and committing murder? Those should really count as only one hobby, not three. Who knows, maybe this is what people did before anyone invented Spider-Man comics and YouTube. (But if that's the case, why are people still committing murder today? Don't they all have better things to do, like watching videos of cats?)
Our murderers tonight live together in a New York apartment - and oddly, neither has a girlfriend. What are you saying, Hitch, gay men are prone to murder? And they strangled a third man - are you sure this wasn't a sex thing? Auto-erotic asphyxiation? Curse the production code...
But pride goeth before a fall, and our murderers can't resist hosting a dinner party while their friend lies hidden inside a piece of furniture. Because what's more hilarious than seeing a man take food from a platter on top of that furniture, while his son's body is inside! Nah, I'm not seeing the humor either. What good is a joke (which this isn't, really) if you can't share it with everyone?
There's plenty of that camera-related intrigue I talked about the other night, where the camera lingers on that piece of furniture, or the rope around those books, to remind the audience that we know something that most of the characters don't, and we're looking at the murder weapon in plain sight - how long will this go on before someone else figures it all out?
Also starring Farley Granger, John Dall (last seen in "Spartacus"), Cedric Hardwicke (last seen in "Suspicion"), Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler, Constance Collier (last seen in "Stage Door").
RATING: 5 out of 10 chickens
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