Warner Bros.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
My rating: 3.5 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Universal)
Two college men decide to murder a classmate as an intellectual exercise. The strangle him in their New York penthouse and then stuff the body in a chest. For further amusement, they hold a dinner party shortly after with the victim's father, aunt and girlfriend among the attendees. However, it is the arrival of Jimmy Stewart that gets them the most excited. He is their former housemaster and instilled in them the philosophy of Nietzsche, from which they drew their inspiration. However, the two men struggle to keep it together, particularly the younger who drinks too much. Stewart begins to suspect something is wrong and eventually pieces together what happened. The film itself is also something of an intellectual exercise, as Hitchcock utilizes a series of long takes to make it appear it takes place in real time. It is partially successful, although the cuts between scenes where the camera artificially zooms in for a close up of a couch or coat, is distracting. Nonetheless, this is another dazzling Hitchcock entry, his first in color and first with Stewart.
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