dial m for murder

initially this blog was supposed to be focused on film analysis, but then my first real entry was a laundry list of clothes i wanted for spring. oh well, i guess it's a little more fun that way. however, in an effort to preserve the initial idea for what has become the look-see, i'll provide clips from films when i can't fully articulate a lengthy or more formal analysis of a film. these clips are entirely deserving of the same written and more theoretical examination, but perhaps beg a little more to be seen in their visual sense.

this is a scene from alfred hitchcock's 'dial m for murder'.

the lighting, angels, editing, and framing are cinematic perfection. no one can build tension quite like hitchcock. it's extremely sexual to the point of near aberrant. the violent and meticulous editing give the scene a slow burning terror, particularly in the context of a vulnerable female and a predatory male, and imbues it with rape imagery and the voyeuristic relationship between tony wendice (ray milland) and his wife margot (grace kelly), as well as the one between viewer and subject. not only does wendice get off (financially and perversely) on the pleasure of having his wife murdered, but hitchcock rubs our noses in it and makes us watch and most importantly enjoy the dirty deed. the scene also includes those wonderful and rare skewed shots in a hitchcock film. after the murderer has been stabbed in the back watch closely at how subtly the frame is slightly tilted giving the murderer an otherworldly and maniac quality, one that is contrasted with the horizontal and standard framing of a frightened kelly. it's a wrenching and horrifying scene in a film that is purely cinematic in its use of editing and hitchcockian in its commentary on voyeurism and the underlying sense of the naughty that boils so incandescently underneath the puritanical american psyche.