Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder is likely the most clever mystery plot in existence
The 1954 film is compellingly intricate, whilst being simultaneously, tidily uncomplicated and compact.
Dial M is a true masterpiece, it’s an example of an ‘honest’ whodunit.
The logic works and we know enough that if we paused the movie and thought about it for long enough we could, in principle, work out what was likely going to happen and why.
To get it to work required painstaking levels of set up by the original playwright who was also the screenwriter: Frederick Knott.
But its apparent simplity is misleading. It’s actually quite a convoluted plot with numerous twists.
Yet it’s achieved frugally and honestly without exhausting the audience with truly random orchestration of ‘just so’ elements.
Somehow it just works, twists included, from just a few carefully chosen ‘initial conditions’.
WARNING: *Spoilers below*
You should under no circumstance read below if you do not know the plot of the movie.
You MUST watch this movie before reading below.
There are multiple aspects of this movie and plot that set it in unique standing in all of cinema and the mystery /…