This is a very strange film, even for Hitchcock.\u00a0 It\u2019s an adaptation of a stage play that Hitchcock turns into a claustrophobic one set crime drama.\u00a0 Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) are upper class New Yorkers living together in an East Side apartment with a panoramic view of the city.\u00a0 They are the products of a prep school and Ivy League education and are convinced that they are Nietzschean supermen who thereby have the right to murder ordinary men with impunity.\u00a0 As the movie opens, they are seen strangling one of their school chums David Kentley with a piece of rope in their apartment.\u00a0 After hiding the body in an antique wooden chest, they go about setting up their apartment for a dinner party that will feature David\u2019s father (played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke) and aunt and David\u2019s fianc\u00e9e Janet.\u00a0 The other cast in the play and party attendees are Mrs. Wilson who is Brandon’s housekeeper, Kenneth Lawrence who is another school friend and also a former boyfriend of Janet\u2019s and Rupert Cadell (played by Jimmy Stewart) who was Brandon and Phillip\u2019s prep school housemaster and the inspiration for their Nietzschean philosophical justification for murder.<\/p>\n
Brandon brazenly uses the chest that David\u2019s body is hidden in as the buffet table for the dinner that the guests feed on during the party.\u00a0 Brandon makes several sly allusions to Kenneth that maybe Janet may be available again for his romantic interest.\u00a0 All the guests are acutely aware that David is unexpectedly late for the party and unaccounted for.\u00a0 Phillip from the start of the movie is extremely nervous about the prospect of being caught.\u00a0 And as the party proceeds, he becomes more and more agitated and begins drinking heavily.\u00a0 In the middle of the proceedings Brandon steers the conversation to his Nietzschean theory of the superman and his right to kill with impunity.\u00a0 When Rupert agrees with this logic at least theoretically Brandon gets heatedly enthusiastic about its validity and this elicits a response from Mr. Kentley to the effect that he is offended by the disrespect for human decency and morality.\u00a0 This snaps Brandon back into a more normal mode and alerts Rupert that something very strange is going on at the party.\u00a0 Rupert starts to put together the various threads of the scene.\u00a0 He recognizes that Brandon is trying to bring Janet and Kenneth together romantically in David\u2019s absence.\u00a0 He recognizes the anxiety in David\u2019s friends and family at his very unusual disappearance and he keys in on Phillip\u2019s anxiety, anger and drunkenness as the way to pry into what was going on below the surface of the gathering.<\/p>\n
Rupert corners Phillip as he is playing the piano to cross-examine him about David\u2019s absence, Brandon\u2019s strange behavior and Phillip\u2019s own anxiety.\u00a0 And as the climax of his investigation he witnesses Phillip\u2019s panic when he sees that Brandon has used the murder weapon, the piece of rope to tie up some old books that Brandon is giving as a gift to Mr Kentley as the old man is leaving to go home to his panicked wife.\u00a0 Right before everyone leaves, Rupert has a talk with Mrs. Wilson, who is an old friend of his.\u00a0 She tells Rupert about the fact that her employer told her to take the afternoon off and then decided at the last minute to serve the dinner off of the chest instead of the dining room table.\u00a0 As Mrs. Wilson is cleaning up and about to open the chest to put some books back into it, Brandon hurriedly stops her from opening it and tells her to hold off her cleaning until the next day.\u00a0 And finally, as Rupert is leaving, he takes the wrong hat from the closet and looking into it he sees a monogram DK (David Kentley).<\/p>\n
Once the guests and Mrs. Wilson have left Brandon and Phillip have an argument.\u00a0 Brandon upbraids Phillip for getting drunk and about his fear over being caught.\u00a0 Phillip angrily blames Brandon for risking discovery by throwing out hints that Rupert was able pick up on.\u00a0 Suddenly the phone rings and Phillip panics when he finds it\u2019s Rupert returning to find his cigarette case.\u00a0 Brandon tells Phillip to get ahold of himself and before Rupert arrives Brandon puts a revolver in his jacket pocket.\u00a0 When Rupert comes in, we find out he hasn\u2019t misplaced his case but instead hides it behind some books on the chest and \u201cdiscovers\u201d it.\u00a0 He takes the excuse of a drink to continue his questioning of Brandon and Phillip.\u00a0 He shows pretty quickly that he thinks they are responsible for David\u2019s disappearance and reasons how they could have knocked out David and hidden him.\u00a0 When Rupert confronts Brandon with the fact that he has a gun in his jacket, Brandon laughs it off as just the protection he will be taking with him to his house in the country.\u00a0 Brandon throws the gun on the piano and Rupert continues his cross-examination and suddenly takes the piece of rope out of his pocket.\u00a0 Phillip screams out that Rupert knows everything and grabs the pistol.\u00a0 Rupert and Phillip fight over the gun.\u00a0 The gun goes off and grazes Rupert\u2019s hand but he gets control of it and takes control of Brandon and Phillip.\u00a0 He opens up the chest and finds David\u2019s body.\u00a0 Brandon tries to justify the murder by virtue of their mutually acknowledged Nietzschean philosophy.\u00a0 Rupert rejects Brandon\u2019s justification and reviles as a monster whose inhumanity would ensure that he and Phillip would both be executed by the law.\u00a0 Rupert goes over to the window and opens it.\u00a0 He fires three rounds into the air and all three wait for the police to arrive.\u00a0 Rupert moves a chair next to the chest and places his arm and the gun on it as if to protect David from his killers.<\/p>\n
As I stated at the beginning, this is a very strange movie.\u00a0 The only character that I found altogether admirable is Mr. Kentley.\u00a0 He represents normal human feelings and ordinary sensibilities.\u00a0 The worst characters are of course Brandon and Phillip.\u00a0 But only slightly less objectionable is Rupert.\u00a0 His elitist attitude toward his supposed superior intelligence is contemptible.\u00a0 The rest of the characters are shallow characters with various foibles and ticks.\u00a0 During the argument over Nietzschean superiority only Mr. Kentley displays the strength of character and humanity to revolt at the cruel indifference displayed by Brandon, Phillip and Rupert.<\/p>\n
With respect to the success of the movie as entertainment I\u2019ll have to say I can only watch this movie every few years.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb \u201cthrill killing\u201d from the 1920s.\u00a0 From that point of view, it holds interest as an almost sociological and psychological statement.\u00a0 It\u2019s depressing, annoying and as noted above claustrophobic.\u00a0 One of the more annoying aspects of the film is the tune that Phillip plays almost endlessly on the piano.\u00a0 I grew to really hate that tune rather quickly.\u00a0 Another annoying aspect of the movie is the homosexuality of Brandon and Phillip.\u00a0 It\u2019s never mentioned, of course because this movie was made in 1948.\u00a0 But the dialog between them makes it clear that they don\u2019t have a normal friendship.\u00a0 And their personalities, especially Brandon\u2019s are extremely unpleasant in a catty womanish way.\u00a0 It\u2019s not fun to see.\u00a0 I would have to say I would only recommend this movie for a fan of Hitchcock who is interested in his technical skill.\u00a0 The way the scenes are melded together at the film cuts is interesting but the story as I\u2019ve described is a mess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a very strange film, even for Hitchcock.\u00a0 It\u2019s an adaptation of a stage play that Hitchcock turns into a claustrophobic one set crime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[494,1439,1255,2203,1228,2474,1234,1233],"class_list":["post-10852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-cedric-hardwicke","tag-farley-granger","tag-friedrich-nietzsche","tag-jimmy-stewart","tag-leopold-and-loeb","tag-mid-century-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city"],"yoast_head":"\n