Murder! (1930)

This 1930 drama was an early field day for Alfred Hitchcock and his evolving ideas about the blurring of opposites: reality and illusion, guilt and innocence, observing and doing, men and women. A rare whodunit in the director's canon, the story finds a stage actress (Norah Baring) convicted of murdering a female friend. Herbert Marshall stars as a veteran theater actor and, coincidentally, member of the jury who has grave doubts about the verdict and decides to investigate the crime on his own. His efforts lead him through a world with which he is sufficiently familiar--that of backstage intrigues--and toward what some critics have charged is an unfortunate link between villainy and a gay stereotype. But that limited critique completely misses the playful overlapping of faulty perceptions invited by this movie, in which Hitchcock deliberately confuses us at times about whether the action we're seeing is real or occurring on a stage. Even when the distinction is obvious, thematic echoes bounce wildly between the two, such as an early scene in which policemen observing a play don't realize the solution to the real murder is weirdly foretold in what they're watching. The print of the film used in the DVD release is serviceable and probably comparable to an average 16mm classroom or museum presentation. The DVD also includes a Hitchcock filmography, trivia questions, a director biography, and scene access. --Tom Keogh Amazon.com

An older Hitchcock - but still great

I got this DVD because I like the English Hitchcock better than the commercialized version that Hollywood saw and marketed.
If you are a fan of Hitchcock, this movie is for you. Good acting and storyline. Most importantly, this movie will show where the inspiration for many classic Hitchock moves comes from. I recopgnized several elements, both technical as well as content-related, that reappeared in later Hitchcock movies. As if Hitchcock, while testing out the sound technology, was also experimenting with other technical and literary effects. January 18, 2008

Worth 3 1/2 stars really

There's something about a silent film, a good silent film, that is just captivating to watch; and "watch" is what we do with silent films, after all, isn't it? Too many more modern films, by comparison, are all talk (often inanely so), devoid of much visual appeal. I think this accounts for Hitchcock's success (John Ford's and others too); his having started in the silent era when "Lights, camera, action" had to carry the day without the added benefit (or crutch as it is sometimes) of sound. That's why this film, "Murder," Hitchcock's second talkie (made in 1930), for the most part, is effective. It has all the feel of a silent film, relying heavily on the visual for dramatic effect. Storywise, it bears some similarity to the later made courtroom drama "12 Angry Men," but in Hitchcock's "Murder" the Henry Fonda character (played ably by Herbert Marshall) doesn't stand his ground in the jury room and thus has to make up for it after the fact by trying to ascertain whether the person he went along with condemning really did, in fact, do it. Norah Baring plays the condemned lady and is vibrantly intriguing to watch, particularly---as it were a silent film---when she says nothing at all. Extra helpings of dialogue for her would have been patently superfluous. "Murder" thus is certainly a film worth having a look at. Full disclosure: I am an avoved fan of silent films & prefer Hitchcock's efforts in black & white to his more colorful works (in which shadow---something Hitch excelled at creating---cannot be as effectively employed). Cheers!
December 6, 2005

A very early Hitchcock

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Format: Black & White
Studio: Timeless Video, Inc
Video Release Date: February 4, 1994

Cast:

Herbert Marshall ... Sir John Menier
Norah Baring ... Diana Baring
Phyllis Konstam ... Doucie Markham (Doucebelle Dear)
Edward Chapman ... Ted Markham
Miles Mander ... Gordon Druce
Esme Percy ... Handel Fane
Donald Calthrop ... Ion Stewart
Esme V. Chaplin ... Prosecuting Counsel
Amy Brandon Thomas ... Defending Counsel
Joynson Powell ... Judge
S.J. Warmington ... Bennett
Marie Wright ... Miss Mitcham
Hannah Jones ... Mrs. Didsome
Una O'Connor ... Mrs. Grogram
R.E. Jeffrey ... Foreman of the Jury
Alan Stainer ... Jury Member
Kenneth Kove ... Jury Member
Guy Pelham Boulton ... Jury Member
Violet Farebrother ... Jury Member
Clare Greet ... Jury Member
Drusilla Wills ... Jury Member
Robert Easton ... Jury Member
William Fazan ... Jury Member
George Smythson ... Jury Member
Ross Jefferson ... Jury Member

Picton Roxborough ... Jury Member
Alfred Hitchcock ... Man on street

I had a hard time believing this was a Hitchcock film. It was only his second attempt at using sound (this was the 1930s). His first was "Blackmail."

A young actress is accused of a murder. A titled actor, Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall), who has met the young lady earlier, is on the jury. The rest of the jurors are convinced that she is guilty, but he is reluctant to accept it; however, due to the overwhelming evidence and the pressure from the other jurors, he goes along and she is due to die.

But, Menier is not willing to concede her guilt and does some investigating of his own.

This is a good mystery thriller, made in England in the best tradition of the films to come in that genre. It is as captivating as all of the rest of the Hitchcock films, and even includes his trademark cameo appearance, although the term "cameo" had yet to be coined for a bit part, by Mike Todd when he made Around the World in 80 Days.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

July 15, 2004

Madacy DVD of MURDER! is uncut 104-minute version

This 1930 British sound film is an early effort by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, to continue to experiment with the use of sound in film. One year before, Hitchcock made the first British sound film, BLACKMAIL, which is famous for the scene where we hear the subjective thoughts of a character via creative sound editing. While BLACKMAIL is still largely a silent film, MURDER! is a more complete attempt to make artistic use of sound to advance storytelling and character depiction. In the opening moments of the film, we see people react to the sound of a commotion nearby, but we never actually see what is causing the noise. In fact, no act of murder is shown in the entire film. Many scenes are conveyed via creative uses of sound. In one ingenious moment, Hitchcock shows the inner thoughts of a distraught stage actress, who imagines the sound of applauses that she would have heard on stage. In a humorous moment, a man speaks in a high-pitch voice off screen in order to prove to others (including the viewers) that he can convincingly imitate a woman. There is also the moment which Hitchcock once said was the best in the film: a man's thoughts are revealed to us while he is looking at the mirror and his gramophone is playing in the background. As his thoughts become more emotional, so does the music from the gramophone. All these usages of sound are commonplace today, of course. But during the early sound era, a film like MURDER! was a rather novel and rewarding experience for the audiences.

The story in MURDER! now seems standard: a stage actress is seemingly wrongly accused of murder, and a veteran actor (Herbert Marshall in his first sound film) tries to prove her innocence. Often described as a whodunit, the film actually reveals the murder's identity about 10 minutes before the end. The film's last act borrows from Shakespeare's Hamlet, with Marshall trying to stage a play that re-creates the murder in order to catch the murderer off guard.

MURDER! is available in several DVD versions, all of which have mere VHS video quality. The version made by Madacy has the least sharp picture. It also has severe cropping at the top of the screen, so that Herbert Marshall's name during the opening credits is completely cut off. The audio is relatively hiss-free, but probably due to an overuse of noise reduction, which renders the soundtrack muffled and hard to listen to. And there is no English subtitles nor closed captioning.

The Madacy DVD version, however, is the only video version available in North America that I know of that has the uncut, original 104-minute British version of the film. The film was cut down to 92 minutes for release in the US, and so video versions of the film have existed only in the 92-minute form. Madacy has apparently somehow obtained the uncut British print. Even though the DVD case shows the running time of 92 minutes, it runs 104 minutes. The DVDs made by other companies, such as Delta (Laserlight) and Whirlwind, all run 92 minutes. Laserlight's version has marginally better picture than Madacy's, and has a hissier, but less muffled soundtrack. The Laserlight DVD also has Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese subtitles, but no English.

So what does the extra footage in the 102-minute version consist of? Not much. I noticed only one extra scene, which happens to be the great character actress Una O'Connor's only appearance in the film. In the 92-min version, the scene where Marshall discovers a broken basin is followed immediately by his trip to the prison. But in he 102-min version, it is followed by an extra scene in the rooming house where Marshall has just spent the night. The scene is mainly about a light-hearted conversation between Marshall and the rooming house landlady (O'Connor), who indirectly offers clues to the murderer's identity. The scene also introduces the existence of the cigarette case that later helps pinpoint the murderer.

Since these DVDs are selling at such lower prices, it probably wouldn't hurt if you buy all of the DVD versions. Buy the Madacy version for the extra footage, and buy the other versions for more presentable picture quality. May 4, 2004

Weirdly captivating

Parts of this film have more in common with the works of Resnais than with any of the overwhelming bulk of Hitchcock's other films. At times achieving a bizarrely effected comic realism: stylistically, Murder is his most severely surrealistic work.

It is very weird, peculiarly paced, and at stages either 35 or 70 years ahead of its time. Here Hitchcock is wildly experimental. Amidst heated tete-a-tetes, the camera may rest on the listening face of a silent participant for some minutes on-end. The hosery scene in the first few minutes, the transvestitism, and the sick-in-bed sequence are all grotesquely hyper-realistic.

The backstage scene is incredible, and again very strange. There is a refreshing honesty about Murder. For all its slowness, Hitchcock seems precise in what he includes and excludes here.

Essential viewing for any fan of Hitchcock, Surrealism, film history, or art history more generally - and for that matter of Resnais, Welles, Truffaut, Jarman, Roeg, Hamlet, Friedkin, Bergman, von Trier, or Peter Jennings (e.g.). This movie will freak you out. August 23, 2003

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