Murder - Alfred Hitchcock

The film starts with a scream in the night. You see a cat running away from, and birds flying away from the sound, across the front of a building. Neighbors start waking up, looking out windows to try to see what is happening. There is a slow pan down the street. You see two heads come out of an open window, looking around and talking about the scream. As they are doing that, the raised window slowly comes down till it is on the backs of their shoulders, they raise it again and keep looking out and talking - while it comes down again. Finally they close the window, get dressed, and go downstairs to see what is happening. The man and the woman get to the crowd surrounding the house where the scream came from, the woman squeezes into the scene of the crime. You see her reaction to the scene, then the focus of the camera moves to the profile of a woman sitting in a chair. The camera pans down and you see at the feet of the chair a fire poker. The camera pans over and you see a body. 

This is the opening of Murder, the 1930 black and white film from Hitchcock. It is his 12th film and it shows his continuing growth in telling a story in his style. The story is about a touring company of actors and one of the actresses, Diana, is the woman in the chair. She has no memory of killing the other actress. During an extended deliberation scene of the jury on Diana's murder trial, we are introduced to Sir John. He is a producer/writer who believes that Diana is innocent. He makes it his goal, and the story of the film, to show that she is innocent. It is quite a good film, and it does keep you guessing as to who the real villain may be. 

Being that the world of the film is a theatre troupe, there are many moments of theatricality to this film. I found them quite interesting to see the theatre world of that time, though in 2022 it also causes some issues. Spoilers: The villain ends up being someone who crossdresses in the show (which was common for that time but implies that crossdressers are bad), and the reason for the murder is that he was going to be outed as being "half-caste" - a mix of black and white. Clearly not an issue in our current timeframe but back then it was. 

Interestingly, the production company was trying to get into making films in two languages, different casts but being filmed at the same time/set/director. Because of this process, Hitchcock also made this as a German language film named Mary. There is also a scene where Sir John has an internal monologue. Due to what was able to be done at the time, they recorded the monologue and played the record during the scene, with an orchestra playing the underscore off-stage.

I watched this on a single DVD that also included an introduction by Tony Curtis, and a bonus clip of the trailer to the Hitchcock film Rope. There is a cameo by Hitch walking past the building towards the start of the film.