by Thilo Wydra
Dial M for Murder features a love triangle in which the institution of marriage is portrayed as a breeding ground for distrust and moral—as well as financial—betrayal. The story takes place in London. The wife, Margot Wendice (Grace Kelly), has taken a lover, American crime author Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings, who had previously acted in Hitchcock’s Saboteur, 1942). Margot’s husband, former tennis player Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), wants to have her murdered by a former classmate, Captain Lesgate, a.k.a Charles Alexander Swann (Anthony Dawson), who is in financial difficulties and is, consequently, easily corruptible. Tony is not motivated by jealousy or any other emotion, but instead, is solely interested in getting his hands on Margot’s money before she can divorce him and possibly marry Mark. Everyone is cheating on everyone else. Everyone can be exploited. The incorruptible, very British, Chief Inspector Hubbard was played by John Williams, who later played a British insurance agent concerned about Grace Kelly’s film mother’s (Jessie Royce Landis) stolen jewelry in To Catch a Thief. Hubbard eventually explains everything in the final scene, triumphantly combing his mustache after Tony Wendice is ultimately taken away.
After Rope and the historical costume drama Under Capricorn (1949), Dial M for Murder was Hitchcock’s third color film, and it is quite remarkable how carefully he considered color in even the smallest details. The most noticeable instance of this was Grace Kelly’s wardrobe by costume designer Moss Mabry. In the opening scene, she is together with Ray Milland, who gives her a short, light kiss before he sits down at the breakfast table, where she is reading the Times. Grace is wearing a pale dress in a very faint rose color. They are both silent. No dialogue. Then, unnoticed by Tony, her face brightens behind the newspaper, which reports that the steamer Queen Mary will soon arrive in Southampton. Among those on board is the “American mystery writer,” Mark Halliday of the United States. There is still no conversation. Cut. Wielded by Hitchcock’s longtime cameraman Robert Burks, the camera again shows Grace Kelly kissing—this time Robert Cummings as Mark Halliday. This kiss is longer and more passionate than the one with Ray. And this time she is wearing a red dress, one that exposes her neck, shoulders, and the top of her décolletage. However, her arms are covered, and she looks enchantingly lovely. It is the dress of one passionately in love. There has been no dialogue up to this point. Cut.
In only a few scenes, Hitchcock has sketched out the basic constellation of characters, avoiding lengthy stories and explanations with tedious dialogue. Including the title and cast list, he needs only two and a half minutes to complete this exposition, and the viewer already knows Margot’s/Grace Kelly’s entire dilemma, how she is caught between two men. One of the two loves her. The other wants to kill her.
Hitchcock staged another kissing scene so that only the shadows of Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings are cast against the apartment door. They hold each other tightly, and the kiss lasts for some time. Then, steps can be heard on the staircase; the apartment is on the ground floor and has a small back garden. As a key turns in the lock and they realize that Margot’s husband Tony must have arrived, the two of them move abruptly away from each other. Out of the one large shadow, there are now two individual ones, which are supposedly positioned an appropriate distance apart. The door opens, and Ray Milland enters the living room. This is a wonderfully choreographed and visually implemented metaphor.
On the night of the plotted murder, Grace wears a bluish-white nightgown. When she is finally arrested after killing her would-be murderer in self-defense, she appears in a stark, buttoned-up gray dress. She is sentenced to death for murder. At the end of the film, on the day before her execution she is wearing a brown coat over a gray dress. Her face is pale—as pale as death. She looks broken; her voice is full of despair, quiet and quivering. Her portrayal is reserved and all the more powerful. Everything about her reveals her fragility.
She allows the viewer to see inside her soul. Before the final concluding turning point arrives, which will mean both her relief and her freedom, her Margot Wendice is a shattered woman. These last fateful and touching moments of Dial M for Murder reveal the skill of a mature, grown-up actress.
From rose to red and then to light blue, gray, and brown—the colors represent Margot’s metamorphosis. Grace Kelly’s costumes reveal Margot’s inner state, reflecting her increasingly cloudy and darkening spirits. For the murder scene, Hitchcock initially wanted to dress her in a heavy morning dress made of silk, against which light and shadows could play during the scene. However, the young actress had an idea of her own. She thought that it would not be logical for a woman, who has already gone to bed, to put on something new in the middle of the night when the telephone rings. No, a woman—in this case, Margot Wendice—would simply switch on the light, open the bedroom door, and go to the table that held the telephone.
Persuaded by Grace, Hitchcock shot the scene thus: Margot leaves the bedroom wearing a pale thin, shimmering blue nightgown, which clings closely to the contours and form of her body. The camera fixes itself on her back. There is no one else there, only the viewer, the voyeur in front of the screen. The fact that Hitchcock let himself be convinced of an alternative costume was an extraordinary, somewhat scandalous development on set. Here was a twenty-three-year-old actress, who till now had only acted in two supporting parts in significant films, ones in which she came across as immature and a little naive and awkward. This was her first mature major role. Yet, she was advising the director on costume decisions. Coming after her refusal to be embarrassed by his naughty stories, Hitchcock was again impressed by Grace’s determination to express her opinion to others, perhaps also by her stubbornness and self-assurance—typical Kelly characteristics. As a result of this, Grace had a say in the selection of her wardrobe for both Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. These were not inconsequential moments for the development of their relationship.
A totally different development during the filming occurred between Grace Kelly and her costar Ray Milland (1905–1986). Grace fell in love with the 6’2” Milland only a few days after they first met. And Milland seemed game to patronize various Hollywood restaurants with the young, blonde beauty at his side. He even seemed proud to be idolized by the new Hitchcock heroine. Milland had starred in many movies, including Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear (1944) and Billy Wilder’s Lost Weekend (1945). Born in Wales, Milland was forty-eight years old, over twice as old as Grace, and at this point, he had been married for twenty-one years to his wife Muriel “Mal” Milland with whom he had a son, Daniel, and an adopted daughter, Victoria. Unfortunately, the affair was found out, and it seriously threatened the Millands’ marriage. They separated temporarily. Murial Milland threatened her husband with divorce, and the public sought to turn Grace Kelly into the homewrecker who had ensnared her older costar. The public saw in her an opportunistic young actress who would shamelessly go to bed with anyone if it would help her career. All of Hollywood thought this to be true. The influential and feared Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper even went so far as to describe Grace as a nymphomaniac. Throughout Grace’s acting career, Hopper would always write disrespectfully about her.
Furthermore, besides the longer affair with Milland, Grace supposedly had short relationships during the filming with screenplay writer Frederick Knott, as well as fellow actor Anthony Dawson.150 It cannot be ascertained if these stories were based on reality or if they were based on the countless, never-ending libelous rumors. However, considering the relationship with Milland, the other affairs seem unlikely. In any case, Ray Milland returned to his wife Muriel, who forgave him. When he died on March 10, 1986, in Torrance, California, at the age of eighty-one, they had been married fifty-four years. Alfred Hitchcock never commented on any of this.
As French director and avid Hitchcock admirer François Truffaut (1932–1984) once claimed, “It was impossible not to see that the love scenes were filmed like murder scenes, and the murder scenes like love scenes . . . It occurred to me that in Hitchcock’s cinema . . . to mak
e love and to die are one and the same.”151 Truffaut was cofounder of the legendary avant garde “Nouvelle Vague” movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whose members included Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Rivette.
Truffaut was right: Hitchcock’s death scenes have something exciting and passionate about them. They connect with other areas of life or even provide a transition from one state to another. Similarly his love scenes carry a latent, disquieting quality, as well as elements of finitude and futility. These romantic scenes include Hitchcock’s carefully staged, captivatingly detailed kiss scenes. One example of this is the scene between Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren in Marnie. Life and death are often bound together with food and/or drink—whether nourishing or poisonous. These function in Alfred Hitchcock’s work as key tropes.
The strenuous filming of the murder scene for Dial M for Murder took an entire week. In the final film, this scene lasts about one minute and is accompanied by Dimitri Tiomkin’s dramatic score. At the end of this stressful week, Grace Kelly found herself covered in bruises. It would not be the first time in which one of Hitchcock’s actresses would endure heavy stress; after filming the famous attic scene in The Birds from Monday morning to Friday evening, Tippi Hedren suffered a nervous breakdown.
For Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock’s cameraman Robert Burks shot the central murder scene from every possible angle. He took close-up shots of Grace Kelly’s face, of her feet kicking and struggling in the air during the fight, of the scissors that are sitting in the foreground on the desktop. Later he cut these close-up scenes into a montage. Time and time again, Grace Kelly had to turn and fall backward onto the hard desk on which the telephone sat. At first, Anthony Lawson lurks behind the heavy, dark green curtain, and then she turns her back on the curtains to answer the telephone. She repeatedly asks “Hello?” with growing confusion, at which point he jumps out and tries to strangle her with a scarf. Some of the shots, specifically those in which Anthony Dawson almost lies on top of Grace Kelly as he tries to kill her, carry overtones of rape.
In recalling Grace’s work with Hitchcock on set, James Stewart (who later starred with Grace in Rear Window) commented, “She seemed to know the movement before Hitchcock had anything to say about it. And I think Hitchcock liked that. I think everybody liked that.”152
During the riveting, brutal murder scene, Margot rams the scissors into the back of Swann (Anthony Dawson), the murderer her husband Tony (Ray Milland) has hired to kill her.
When Swann falls backward onto the floor, he causes the scissors to plunge deeper into his back. Predating the legendary, black-and-white shower scene in Psycho by six years, this scene made film history. This murder scene, which would legally be considered an action of self-defense and not an actual murder, is considered to be among the top four most shocking Hitchcock death scenes, along with the gas oven murder in Torn Curtain (1966), the shower murder in Psycho, and the tie murder in Frenzy (1972).
These four murder scenes are the most brutal, starkly violent portrayals in Hitchcock’s entire filmography. Over time, it is clear that Hitchcock increased the open brutality, specifically the immediacy of the violence, in his movies. The exaggerated “horror” of the scissors murder scene in Dial M for Murder and the even more extreme terror of the shower murder in Psycho are exceeded by the crude, cold realism of the gas oven murder scene in Torn Curtain and the oppressively realistic tie murder in Frenzy. With these scenes, Hitchcock moves far beyond the traditional level of visible and comprehensible depictions of violence.
Many years later, over twenty years after the filming of Dial M for Murder, on April 29, 1974, Hitchcock gave a short thank-you speech at an honorary gala event at Lincoln Center. He sat between Grace Kelly and his wife Alma. His sinister concluding sentence, which came on the heels of numerous compliments and film clips, was also playful: “As you have seen on the screen, scissors are the best way.”153
After Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock went on to film six more films for Paramount, beginning in late fall of 1953. Rear Window, which began filming in late November 1953, was the prelude to Paramount’s golden era. Psycho was the conclusion. During this creative period, which he himself described as a time in which his “batteries were fully charged,” he made film after film.154 All told, the 1950s were the most prolific years of his eighty-year life. These were also the years in which he felt the happiest and most fulfilled artistically.
Interestingly, Grace Kelly experienced something similar. Between 1953 and 1955, Grace acted in what could be considered her most important films, advancing from supporting roles to main roles, coming into her own as an actress. At this time she reached the absolute peak of her ability, her acting power, and perhaps even her all-too-short life. In the spring of 1956, everything would change.
In reference to her Hitchcockian debut (for which she was awarded a New York Film Critics Award) Grace later said: “Working with Hitch was wonderful for me.”155
Rear Window
(1954)
She’ll be different in every movie she makes. Not because of makeup or clothes but because she plays a character from the inside out. There’s no one else like her in Hollywood.
—Alfred Hitchcock156
My mother especially liked Rear Window.
—Prince Albert II of Monaco157
So far she has only played lead roles. What you’re still missing is a portrayal around which an entire film can be composed. That is the ultimate test.
—Alfred Hitchcock158
Once Dial M for Murder was finished, Grace returned to New York as soon as she could. Unlike life in the pretentiously glittering, glamorous dream factory of Hollywood, she felt more at home in New York. As she once commented, in California, the sun always shone unnaturally, and money was the only thing that had value here. It was October. Grace’s agent Jay Kanter called and sent her two screenplays for two roles that had been offered to her: On the Waterfront (1954) and Rear Window. Within a short time, Grace had to decide between the two, since both of the projects would soon start preproduction. It couldn’t have been an easy decision.
For Rear Window, MGM would again need to lend her to another studio. Since MGM held a seven-year contract with Grace, she would have to be loaned to Paramount, as she had been to Warner for Dial M for Murder. On one hand, On the Waterfront would permit Grace to stay in New York. On the other hand, Hitchcock had asked specifically for her, and she loved working with the Master of Suspense. Grace’s dilemma was made all the worse by the two very different film projects and their two very different female characters. On the Waterfront was a raw, realistic, sociocritical, film made in black and white. Marlon Brando had already been cast in the role of Terry Malloy. Edie Doyle, the role offered to Grace, lived in a world that was completely foreign to Grace. Rear Window was intended to be filmed in color starring James Stewart. The character of Lisa Carol Fremont was a woman of great elegance, class, and style. Furthermore, she was at home in the New York fashion scene. This was a character close to Grace herself. She would be able to interpret and polish this role more precisely and authentically. In addition, Grace learned that Hitchcock had already authorized the preparation for her costumes. Grace chose Hitch.
Without a doubt, this was one of the most critical, direction-setting decisions of her film career, perhaps even of her life. What would have happened if she had chosen On the Waterfront? Her loveliest and most significant film would never have been made, and perhaps Hitchcock’s subsequent offer to star in To Catch a Thief would never have taken place. Most likely, her life would have gone in a very different direction. Because of To Catch a Thief, Grace first encountered the French Riviera, which she later decided to visit for a longer period in the summer of 1954. She returned another time in May 1955 as a guest of the Cannes Film Festival. She stayed in the legendary Carlton Hotel and chose to visit the principality of Monaco, where she met Prince Rainier III for the first time. It could even be said that Grace’s decision in October
1953 to film Rear Window with Hitchcock ultimately resulted in him losing her as an actress after To Catch a Thief.
In the end, On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan with Marlon Brando and Karl Malden in the main roles, was a springboard and breakthrough role for another blonde actress. For her first film role, Eve Marie Saint received an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Edie Doyle. Five years later, she starred beside Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959). Along with Kim Novak in Vertigo, Vera Miles in The Wrong Man (1956) and Psycho, and particularly Tippi Hedren in The Birds and Marnie, Eve Marie Saint was among the later group of blonde heroines, in whose stead Hitchcock would have gladly cast Grace Kelly. This is how some of the actresses actually felt, as if they were simply Grace Kelly replacements in the films that followed the three Hitchcock-Kelly movies.
In the third week of November 1953, Grace again traveled to Hollywood, for the costume fitting for Rear Window. Here she was expected by her director, as well as by the renowned costume designer Edith Head (1897–1981). All told, five different costumes were planned for her in Rear Window. Hitchcock had already sketched and authorized everything in great detail, from the form to the style and color. As Edith Head remembered: “Hitchcock told me it was important that Grace’s clothes help to establish some sort of conflict in the story. She was to be a typical sophisticated society-girl magazine editor who falls in love with a scruffy photographer, Jimmy Stewart. Hitch wanted her to look like a piece of Dresden China, something slightly untouchable. So I did that. Her suits were impeccably tailored; her accessories looked as though they couldn’t be worn by anyone else but her. She was perfect.”159