One of the charmingest lines in
the oeuvre of Alfred Hitchcock,
in the sound era at any rate,
finds the would-be assassin of
his well-to-do wife peevishly
mocking her refusal to go along
with his well-oiled conspiracy.
Her task is to stay at home, so
to bore herself to sleep that
she may be awakened in a daze
and overpowered by a strangler.
But she wants to go to a movie.
Thus, he must shame her for re-
quiring him to stay as well, by
ridiculing what they might do.
As any decent murderer from a
hit play - the original book
for this film - would only too
freely confess, the show must
go on, the crisis must precip-
itate, the unities be observed.
Now the assassin plays the pro-
gressive part, and the victim
the transgressive in the long-
running thriller, grinding
away on Pennsylvania Avenue.
But these terms of art only
miss the point of Dial M for
Murder. Crime is not ideology,
it's meteorology; it's what
the times will permit. Imagin-
ing rolling back the tide, to
those halcyon days of Biden's
highest ever-held office, in-
vites one to neglect the plot.
Alfred Hitchcock
director
Frederick Knott
and Alfred Hitchcock
screenplay
Dial M for Murder
Warner Brothers, 1954©
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