I was cheering for the husband as his wife was cheating on him.Anyone else feel same way?
shareYes I did.
I couldn't stand that Halliday character. What really annoyed me was the way he bent over backwards to get Tony to confess and serve a prison term so that he could get his grubby hands on his wife again.
I very often have a perverse rooting for a murderer or robber in a film. In the case of DIAL M FOR MUDER I don't really see my hoping that the husband would get away with it, all that perverse. Margot and her boyfriend weren't very likeable at all. So like you, I wish the husband had got away with it.
shareI was also rooting for Tony Wendice.
shareAnyone else feel the same way?You're not in the minority, I'll tell you that much.
Yes. When he got caught at the end I was just like "dammit!"
share[deleted]
I actually felt devastated he got caught.
But then, I too, usually root for the bad guys
But Tony Wendice is a really charming villain and Milland's just excellent in the role, I think it's largely his merit we grow to like his character so much.
Well obviously others agree with you but I'm concerned that so far there are no posters that don't.
Whilst his wife may have been cheating on him people here obviously think thats a good enough reason to murder her. And then not necessarily because she was cheating but, as he admitted, because he would then lose access to her money.
It wasn't even as if it was a spur of the moment thing and he tried to do the deed himself, he had apparently been planning and scheming this for sometime to coerce and bribe somebody else to do it for him.
Even when it all goes wrong and he could have stopped it there, he persists in trying to get her wrongly executed by trying to incriminate her.
Sorry but if this had happened for real I would not have any sympathy for him.
But it does not happen for real.
shareBut Tony Wendice is a really charming villain and Milland's just excellent in the role, I think it's largely his merit we grow to like his character so much.
DKeaton sums it up well for me. Milland is so good, you enjoy watching him. My favorite scene is the one with him "recruiting" Swann. I think it's fairly common in these types of films to start pulling for the schemer to get away with it, especially when the "rival" Cummings is such a putz.
I wasn't terribly concerned about the infidelity. We got to know the other man better at first and he's a nice chap, if not very interesting. However, once the husband started laying out his plot I wanted him to get away with it because he's clever and interesting and going to a lot of effort.
Then when the plot failed, I wanted him to at least get away with it, but when it became clear his plan was to frame his wife, he lost my sympathy. It's one thing to kill somebody out of nowhere, it's another to try and fail to kill her spring a trap of evidence around her, and let her face trial and execution as the only person who believes she didn't do it.
I got midway through the movie and realized there was no one to root for, unless you root for the inspector.
The husband is a murderer who only married the wife for her money--okay, and maybe because her name was Grace Kelly--the wife is a self-pitying, self-centered woman who only thought about herself and cheated on Ray Milland because the pretty and younger Bob Cummings came along, the boyfriend is scum who will diddle other men's wives, and the would-be burglar is also a murderer.
Yuck, I'm hoping they all rot.
Except for the inspector, the only character who is good.
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"The past is never dead. It's not even past."--Faulkner
Except for the inspector, the only character who is good.
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Like Columbo.
But hey, c'mon, Tony Wendice is pretty evil. Forcing the other man to commit the murder(he's quite dominating and evil when he puts the final blackmail pressure on); then jumping in to frame his wife for THAT guy's murder(rather than just letting things lie-- now the wife will be HANGED instead of strangled) And all to make sure he keeps Grace's money(well, the affair probably bothered him too, but its the money that really matters to him.)
This was made under the highly moral "Hays Code" and so I think Hitchcock was saying: "All of these people are pretty bad, none of them deserve true happiness." So the happy ending isn't really THAT happy. They're all jerks.