Gone to America

I love New York. Where else could you get to see Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial ‘M’ for Murder in its original 3D? Normally, I wouldn’t review an old movie, a movie I’d already seen, but watching this (always one of my favourite Hitchcocks) in 3D was like seeing it for the first time. Film Forum’s presentation was flawless. These weren’t those crummy red and blue cardboard glasses, but fancy polarising ones. The effect is fantastic – a very convincing 3D effect (sorry Dad, you’ll never know).
But the real eye opener here isn’t the technology – it’s the forceful reminder of Hitchcock’s genius. Hitchcock himself was dismissive of the process, describing it as a ”...nine day wonder, and I came in on the ninth day”. It was barely released in 3D, even at the time. Which is a real shame, because Hitchcock went beyond the usual 3D gimmickry – nobody throws anything at the camera in this movie – and brilliantly used the technology to expand and enrich his already incredibly sophisticated use of space.
It’s largely set in one room – Hitchcock refused to “open out” the original play – but that was never a barrier to him. By his use of angles to manipulate space Hitchcock could always make any room do whatever he wanted it to, and 3D only gives him more freedom. Characters move perpendicularly to the camera, sharing the same flat plane, then suddenly we’re at an angle – they’re in different planes, perhaps with a lamp in the foreground dividing the screen in two. It’s a dramatic moment.
Hitchcock’s extraordinary sensitivity to the important moments in his story, and his ability to enhance them with subtle differences in composition are given free reign here. Never has so much been made of so little – the story isn’t really that great. Why did they bother to remake it?
It’s a pretty straightforward process story, a battle of wits between the criminal and the police. All emotion is sublimated in intellect – any character who permits themselves to feel anything is easily outsmarted. The only things that make it interesting are Hitchcock’s traditional game of making us sympathise with the criminal through the use of suspense, thereby implicating us (you really, really want Wendice to be able to put that key under the carpet, even though he’s trying to murder his wife; you really, really don’t want Swann to leave before the phone rings, etc.) and his command of pacing and drama, ringing the very most out of the moments of conflict and revelation.
Hitchcock’s more dramatic innovations, his more experimental, and more famous movies, have really tended to date badly. We have to go back to the more solid, conventional movies in his canon to see how good he really was. 3D was made for Hitchcock – it suits his aesthetic perfectly. Here he pointed the way for an intelligent use of the system to enhance stortelling without resorting to gimmickry, but it was too late. It was the “ninth day”. A real shame for us all. Worth hunting out – it’s much more impressive than you think.