The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, October 28-November 3
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Sometimes taken to be a stagebound, minor work, Dial M for Murder is in fact one of the Master’s signal achievements, underappreciated because it is so rarely seen in its original 3D format; no less than Lifeboat, Rope, or Rear Window, it was designed from the ground up around its unifying visual conceit. In Hitchcock’s hands, the film’s stereoscopy becomes a visual metaphor for the alienation that drives (or merely permits) Ray Milland to plot the murder of wife Grace Kelly and then, when that plan goes awry, enables him to quickly improvise a new one. The transfiguration of shared spaces by private emotions was a theme the director returned to often, but in no other film did he give it so concrete a form. Eli Goldfarb (October 30, 2:45pm, 9:30pm; October 31, 12:30pm, 4:50pm; November 1, 3pm; November 3, 2:45pm, 9:15pm at Film Forum’s “Classic 3-D”)