Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 257: Fri Sep 14

Dial M For Murder (3D version): (Hitchcock, 1953): BFI Southbank, NFT3 6.10pm & 8.40pm
This highlight of the Hitchcock season at the BFI Soutbank is also screening on Thu 13 Sep. More details here.

This is my most anticipated film in the Genius of Hitchcock season at BFI Southbank. The master director used 3-D in typically innovative fashion and the screening of this film in that format has created quite a stir when shown in New York in recent years. I wrote about the background to this version of the film here in a Guardian article while the celebrated film academic David Bordwell has written extensively on the 3-D aspects of Dial M For Murder on his blog here.

Chicago Reader review:
'Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 adaptation of Frederick Knott's dinner-theater warhorse about a fading tennis champion (Ray Milland) who arranges the murder of his wife (Grace Kelly). The film is confined almost entirely to a cramped apartment set—a constricted space that takes on a highly expressive quality in the picture's original 3-D version. The screenplay tends to constrain rather than liberate Hitchcock's thematic thrust, but there is much of technical value in his geometric survey of the scene and the elaborate strategies employed to transfer audience sympathy among the four main characters.' Dave Kehr

There are some 3-D clips on YouTube here.