Dial M for Murder (1954 Alfred Hitchcock)

Dial H for Hitchcock - or has someone already done that one? Sadly even restoration to Blu-Ray doesn't help with horrendous process shots and badly overlit sets - nor of course with the director's seeming obsession with large lamps - all of which are I guess by-products of shooting in the horrible 3D process.

Milland is superbly slimy ('bastard!' Q kept emitting); with Robert Cummings and Anthony Dawson, Kelly not so happy in this role, I felt. But film shifts up a gear with John Williams - who enhances any film he's in.

Quite talky (Frederick Knott helped adapt his own play) but lots of interesting stuff. I like the irony of Dawson slowly being forced into committing the murder then, as Milland chats to Kelly on the phone, he paces around, checking the plan. (Lots of low camera angles appear in this scene too.) And there's some great stuff with Williams, Kelly and Milland. And the murder - I like the way the camera tracks around her before we see the murderer...

And the court scene... This is a filmed play, but it manages to transcend that through stuff like this.

Dmitri Tiomkin score, Burks on camera.