Culture

Rialto Cinema - Moray Place
Saturday 17 August 8.30pm
Sunday 18 August 5.45pm

Dial M for Murder has everything you’d expect from a great Alfred Hitchcock movie: Grace Kelly, greed, and scissors as a murder weapon. Driven by betrayal and lust for money, ex-tennis star Tony Wendice (Ray Millaird) hatches a plan to have his wealthy and unfaithful wife Margot (Grace Kelly) bumped off, only to have his plan foiled by a conveniently placed pair of scissors.

Released in 1954 to rave reviews, the film’s critical acclaim has grown to the point where in 2008 the American Film Institute canonised it as the ninth-best mystery film ever made (quite a feat considering the number of noir films produced in the 50s). Based on a highly successful stage play by Frederick Knott, the film has theatrical leanings – it takes place almost entirely in one room and is dramatically ironic in the sense that the audience often knows more than the characters than they know about themselves.

But surely I could just rent this on DVD; why see it on the big screen? Because you can see it in 3D! The movie was filmed carefully with the now legendary Natural Vision 3D rig – the technology that sparked the 3D craze in House of Wax and Bwana Devil. Hitchcock even went a step further by placing his camera in a dug out pit on set to add extra depth to the low angle shots. Unfortunately, however, post-war Hollywood had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it interest in 3D projection, and Hitchcock just missed the bandwagon. By the time the film was released the general public had fallen out of love with the new technology and cinemas played Dial M for Murder in conventional 2D. As Hitchcock said himself, 3D is “a nine-day wonder, and I came in on the ninth day.”

With today’s broad acceptance of 3D projection, Warner Bros. completed the long and arduous job of digitally restoring the film so it can be played the way Hitchcock originally intended. The bold colours and stereoscopic photography of Dial M for Murder are beautifully complimented by the 3D, and it is refreshing to see the technology used for a film style other than extreme action or fantasy.