I’m currently working my way through a Hitchcock boxset. Wasn’t sure I’d like this one. Chamber drama, noted for its long continuous takes, and viewed as an interesting failure. But I kind of ended up adoring the film. I’m a sucker for discussions of Nietzsche and this is essentially a play staged around the practicalities and misinterpretations of his work. As such it’s essentially an intellectual conflict between Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) and two of his students who have taken his lectures to their logical, murderous, extreme. Stewart is great as Cadell, working like a detective and slowly unravelling the web of deceit his two students have spun, but the stars of the piece are John Dall and Hitchcock’s direction.
Dall plays Brandon, the more forthright of the murders who after strangling a college associate hides his body in a chest. He then hosts a dinner party whilst his accomplice almost loses his mind. Dall gives Brandon a snide, aloof quality which makes him instantly loathable. He’s a perfect caricature of an insufferable academic and the way he struts around the screen and spouts Nietzsche styled philosophy is almost pantomime. But it works staggeringly well, because the film is essentially about way for someone to be hoisted on their own petard. Despite being based on an earlier stage play the idea of the corpse being at the centre of a dinner party feels like pure Hitchcock.
Hitchcock himself embraces the stagey nature of the film and makes it an integral part of the story, his long takes serving to create an amazing amount of tension amongst the cast. The film is full of great directorial tricks, like a scene halfway through where a suspicious Cadell interrogates the other murder whilst he plays piano. As the other murderer gets more anxious his playing becomes more and more erratic. A later scene with the distant sound of sirens getting louder and louder is another great use of sound.
I really ended up enjoying the piece, I can understand the limitations and staginess of the film but I actually think they work to attract attention to the tensions within the cast. What are other people’s opinions? Am I being retarded here?
