Dial 'M' for Murder

Let's start with this...

The Scissors

This image, from Hitchcock's Dial 'M' for Murder, is widely recognizable.  It depicts a wild Grace Kelly, desperately reaching for anything she can get her hands on to defeat her attacker.  The Scissors.  Just a pair of scissors.  Barely in reach, she's so close to not getting them...but she does, and then what happens next, is not just the death of the man hired by her husband to murder her, but a scene no viewer will ever forget.

After flopping over Margot (Grace Kelly), apparently dead, he snaps back to life, his arms twisting helplessly as he tries to withdraw the blades, before he turns over and hits the floor . The impact drives the scissor blades further into his back. Not only was Hitchcock so excited for his viewers to see this scene, but he celebrates the moment ....the scissors, slip slowly and neatly into his back.  The scene is shot from the floor, but not from the floor up.  He had a special pit dug into the carpet, to make the lens flush with the floor.  That way, we didn't miss a thing.

Just a side note:  after several unsuccessful attempts to film this scene, Alfred Hitchcock said, "This is nicely done but there wasn't enough gleam to the scissors, and a murder without gleaming scissors is like asparagus without the hollandaise sauce - tasteless." 


The Players

Cary Grant was supposed to play Tony Wendice, the murderous husband, but Warner Brothers wouldn't allow it.  They felt that the character was too dark and they didn't want Grant to be type-cast as a villain.  Instead, Ray Milland takes over brilliantly.  Just enough "mad" behind his eyes to believe so calm a man wants his wife brutally strangled after finding out she was having an affair.

"I thought of 3 different ways of killing him.  I even thought of killing her.  That seemed a far more sensible idea, " he says as calmly as if he were giving the time

This was Hitchcock's first time working with Grace Kelly, who would go on to co-star in Rear Window.  She was, in my opinion, Hitchcock's most beautiful leading lady. 

Alfred Hitchcock had chosen a very expensive robe for Grace Kelly to wear when she answered the phone during her attempted murder. The actress balked and said that "no woman would put a robe on to answer the phone when she was sleeping alone but would answer it in her slip". Hitchcock agreed to do it her way and from then on, she was in charge of her wardrobe.    In Dial 'M',  Kelly wanted her outfits to start out bright and beautiful, and then begin to get darker and more bleak.  She felt that clothes and emotion were connected.  Her choices are shown below:

Her opening scene

Her final scene

That's it for now....

Next up...North by Northwest??