Hitch's only film in 3D. He was very experimental. One of his early silents - Champagne I think it was - features a very early example of freeze frame. Blackmail was the first British talkie, and also featured off stage dubbing of the lead actress Anny Ondra. Decades before Bird Man and 1917, Hitch made the first 'continuous take' film, Rope, and in Lifeboat managed to concentrate the action into the one single setting. And in Psycho he innovatively killed off the leading lady a third into the picture. And don't forget that single frame of red in the ending of Spellbound. Not that there's no music in The Birds.
No attempt has been made to 'open out' Frederick Knott's play - like some of Hitch's others, it's set almost exclusively in the apartment of Ray Milland and Grace Kelly (it's not a very big apartment, either); even the court room scene is almost abstract - just Kelly and the Judge in close ups. But it's still very cinematic.
Also features John Williams' most substantial performance. With Robert Cummings and Anthony Dawson. Shot by Robert Burks, edited by Rudi Fehr (Hitch's next film, Rear Window, was the first cut by George Tomasini), music by Dmitri Tiomkin.
"I like watching Dial M For Murder. It's wonderful to watch because it's a lesson in cutting... Watch how Hitchcock changes the camera angles; watch how the size of the frame changes, on what line of dialogue. It's not just that they change; it's when Hitchcock chooses to do a different set-up. And how different that set-up is. It's very subtle...It's like listening to a fugue by Bach, trying to figure out where the next phrase is beginning and where it ends."
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