So… **takes a deep breath** the premise of framing a murder around a dinner party with the victim’s friends and family exclusively in attendance while the victim’s body is hidden in plain sight (inside of a book chest disguised as a buffet), for a sick piece of performance art, is the one of the most harrowing, creative things I’ve never knew I needed.

Whew, chile!

Hitchcock plays methodically with double entendres and metaphor in this screenplay. My god! The skillful use of language by the criminals to refer to a crime the partygoers had no realization of is insane. Freaking outstanding script! And the main culprit Brandon (played by John Dall) using euphemisms to soften his language and to not make his vile conduct so obvious drove me crazy.

Bruh, “hangover,” “strangle,” “hang up,” were all used with no reference to the crime or the murder weapon. 🤯😱🤯😱

The screenplay used almost every verb that could signal a nefarious association with a rope. But a rope without context is a totally innocent object. We know this when we see it tied around the books handed to the victim’s father. But in context, it is the deadly weapon used to murder his own son for the sake of art. Or for some sick obsession with a mentor’s past words about human nature, a person who never intended for unethical theory to be a person’s fatal reality and a couple of culprits’ sick fantasy. 

Dude! A murderer was discussing the morality of a murder with the father of the man he just murdered. I’m, colloquially, dead. Way too meta for the kid.

Rupert Cadell (played by James Stewart, a Hitchcock casting staple) played the former mentor who pieced together the repugnant conduct of his former students. His character was the audience’s ally.  The look Cadell gave to the criminals following one criminal homeboy’s (Phillip) outbursts towards the other criminal homeboy (Brandon)—how it lingered for a couple extra seconds—sent chills down my spine. Man, if looks could kill, then the Cadell side eye would be the death of me.  He later used a metronome while Phillip played the piano as a tell to gauge his strange anxiety—genius, bruh!

Brandon and Phillip killed their friend for a chance to inspire a fake-deep conversation about art, using their former mentor’s words as inspiration words that he himself didn’t even take seriously. They wanted to be extraordinary! They just wanted to be extraordinary, to get away with murder using an ordinary household item, and live to tell about it. Brilliant!

The conclusion was incredible—here’s why:

💡There’s a thrill in Cadell already knowing the maleficence that took place before he leaves the apartment with the other partygoers in search of David. He’s intimately aware of these men. He knows their awkward ticks. So to see his maneuvering upon return to the apartment and to ultimately secure the confessions of the men after a game of “Tell me how I did it…” was astonishing. 

💡As Cadell explains his idea of the hypothetical path on how David was murdered, the camera follows the path.  While this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this type of follow-through coverage on film, I think what’s particularly unique about this instance is that I realized the entire film was shot is one extremely long take. Like a theater play that never breaks. There are only shifts from conversation to conversation until the end. The conclusion was the first time in which the frame was not directed at any specific character, alive or dead. Hitchcock seemed to break that one established rule and it’s a dope stylistic detail.  

💡 Hitchcock was intentional about the grouping certain characters in the fore- and backgrounds to emphasize curiosity, suspicion, and general unease. Also, along with grouping, he was consistent with shifting from one character reaction in one discussion to the actions of another character. For example, Phillip mistakenly cuts his hand in the background when the maid shouted “David” (the murder victim) towards another dinner guest she’d mistook him for. Phillip knew David was in the chest in the same area as the mistaken dinner guest, which spooked him; this became thee moment in the film that captured my fullest attention.

In conclusion, this is a cool-ass, underrated Hitchcock classic. K’bye.