Dial M for Murder Page #4

Synopsis: In London, wealthy Margot Mary Wendice had a brief love affair with the American writer Mark Halliday while her husband and professional tennis player Tony Wendice was on a tennis tour. Tony quits playing to dedicate to his wife and finds a regular job. She decides to give him a second chance for their marriage. When Mark arrives from America to visit the couple, Margot tells him that she had destroyed all his letters but one that was stolen. Subsequently she was blackmailed, but she had never retrieved the stolen letter. Tony arrives home, claims that he needs to work and asks Margot to go with Mark to the theater. Meanwhile Tony calls Captain Lesgate (aka Charles Alexander Swann who studied with him at college) and blackmails him to murder his wife, so that he can inherit her fortune. But there is no perfect crime, and things do not work as planned.
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Director(s): Alfred Hitchcock
Production: Warner Bros. Pictures
  Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 3 wins & 2 nominations.
 
IMDB:
8.2
Rotten Tomatoes:
88%
PG
Year:
1954
105 min
6,925 Views


I wanted to play in a

covered-court tournament...

...and, as usual,

she didn't want me to go.

I was in the bedroom. The phone rang.

It all sounded pretty urgent.

After that, she seemed rather keen

that I play in the tournament.

So I packed my kit into

the car and drove off.

I parked the car two streets away,

walked back in my tracks.

Ten minutes later, she came out

of this house and took a taxi.

I took another.

Her old school friend

lived in a studio in Chelsea.

I could see them through the studio window

as he cooked spaghetti over a gas range.

They didn't say much.

They just looked very natural together.

You know, it's funny how you

can tell when people are in love.

I went for a walk.

I began to wonder what would happen

if she left me.

I'd have to find some way

of earning a living, to begin with.

I suddenly realized how much

I'd grown to depend on her.

All these expensive tastes

I'd acquired while I was at the top.

Now, big tennis

had finished with me...

...and so, apparently,

had my wife.

I can't ever remember

being so scared.

I dropped into a pub

and had a couple of drinks.

As I sat in the corner,

I thought of all sorts of things.

I thought of three different

ways of killing him.

I even thought of killing her.

That seemed a far more sensible idea.

And just as I was working out

how I could do it...

...I suddenly saw something

which completely changed my mind.

I didn't go to that tournament

after all.

When I got back, she was sitting

exactly where you are now.

I'd told her I decided to give up tennis

and look after her instead.

-Well?.

-Well, as things turned out...

...I needn't have got

so worked up after all.

Apparently, their spaghetti evening

had been a sort of a fond farewell.

The boyfriend had been

called back to New York.

-An American?.

-Yes.

There were long letters from there.

They usually arrived on Thursdays.

She burned them all except one.

That one she used to transfer

from handbag to handbag.

It was always with her.

That letter became

an obsession with me.

I had to find out what was in it.

Finally, I did.

That letter made very interesting reading.

-Do you mean you stole it?.

-Yes.

I even wrote her two anonymous notes

offering to sell it back.

-Why?.

-I was hoping it would make her...

...come and tell me all about him.

But it didn't,

so I kept the letter.

Why are you telling me all this?.

Because you're the only

person I can trust.

Anyway, that did it.

It must have put the fear of God

into them because the letters stopped.

And we lived happily ever after.

You know, it's funny to think

that just a year ago...

...I sat in that nice bridge pub

actually planning to murder her.

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Frederick Knott

Frederick Major Paull Knott (28 August 1916 — 17 December 2002) was an English playwright and screenwriter known for his ingeniously complex, crime-related plots. Though he was a reluctant writer and completed only three plays in his career, two have become classics: the London-based stage thriller Dial M for Murder, which was later filmed in Hollywood by Alfred Hitchcock, and the chilling 1966 play Wait Until Dark, which also became a Hollywood film. more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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