Murder - Sir John intervenes!
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Murder - Sir John intervenes! |
| Original title | Murder! |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1930 |
| length | 104 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script |
Alfred Hitchcock Walter C. Mycroft Alma Reville |
| production |
John Maxwell for British International Pictures |
| music | John Reynders |
| camera | Jack E. Cox |
| cut | Rene Marrison |
| occupation | |
| |
Murder - Sir John intervenes! (Original title Murder! ) Is an early sound film by the English director Alfred Hitchcock from 1930 based on the novel "Enter Sir John" by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson . Hitchcock shot the film immediately afterwards in a German version (with different actors and a slightly different plot) called Mary .
action
Diana Baring is a member of a traveling acting company. One day, when she is found without memory next to a colleague's body, all circumstances indicate that she committed the crime. In the murder trial, the theater producer, writer and actor Sir John Menier is the only juror who has doubts about her guilt until the end. However, he bowed to pressure from the rest of the jury and ultimately voted guilty.
Driven by his guilty conscience, Sir John sets off on his own to find the real culprit. He also falls in love with Diana and thinks he knows her from before. He hires two members of Diana's cast, the stage manager and his wife, who is an actress, and does some research. He runs into Handel Fane , an acrobat with transvestite inclinations who was engaged to Diana. He is a "half-cast" (original: "Halfcaste"), which circumstance a mutual friend threatened to betray Diana. Fane murdered her for it. With no evidence whatsoever, Sir John wants to corner Fane. He lets him audition for a supposedly new play: an examination of the Diana Baring case. Fane panics. He commits suicide during a circus performance, but first makes a written confession. Sir John and Diana Baring are united in happy endings in life and on the theater stage.
backgrounds
Murder! is Hitchcock's third thriller after The Tenant and Blackmail and one of the few whodunits in Hitchcock's career - a narrative form that Hitchcock himself always found boring. The film draws its tension mainly from the question of whether it will be possible to save the convicted alleged murderer from the rope.
Work on the script did not go as smoothly and when filming began there was a lack of dialogue. Hitchcock therefore allowed the performers to improvise their dialogues. Later he was dissatisfied with the result: “ The result was not good. Too many breaks. They were too attached to what to say. The spontaneity I was hoping for did not materialize. “, Hitchcock told François Truffaut in 1962 .
Murder! is, despite some weaknesses, an already quite complex thriller with several narrative levels and various patterns and motifs that will pervade Hitchcock's later career, e.g. B. the motive of the innocent persecuted, the mixing of theater or play and reality, the inability of the police, the exploration of what is technically feasible (here: playing with sound and sound effects) or long camera positions, which were still quite difficult at the time.
In one scene, while shaving, Sir John listens to opera music ( Tristan and Isolde ) on a radio , at the same time one can hear his thoughts in this scene. Hitchcock achieved this by having Herbert Marshall speak on a tape recorder beforehand, which was then played back during the current scene. Behind the wall of the room there was also a 30-man orchestra that played the music for the scene at the same time, as it was not possible to add music to a dialogue scene at the time.
The thematization of transvestism, of alleged or actual homosexuality and of racial affiliations (especially as a motive for murder) was daring from the point of view of the time and is certainly more than questionable from today's point of view. This dramaturgical weakness was one reason why Murder! generally rated lower than other Hitchcock thrillers. However, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol count 1955 in their Hitchcock book Murder! to the three best "British" Hitchcock films.
On the occasion of a re-release, the New Yorker wrote : “ A well-done early Hitchcock crime thriller from the stage scene, not in the same class as his films from the mid-thirties, but interspersed with inventive tricks. "
In Germany, the film was shown for the first time on November 23, 1985 at 11.30 p.m. on ZDF .
literature
- Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky, eds. Joe Hembus : Alfred Hitchcock and his films. (OT: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. ) Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 .
- John Russel Taylor: The Hitchcock Biography. Fischer Cinema 1982, ISBN 3-596-23680-0 .
- Donald Spoto : Alfred Hitchcock - The dark side of genius. German translation by Bodo Fründt. Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-55146-X .
- Bodo Fründt : Alfred Hitchcock and his films. Heyne Film Library Volume 91, 1986, ISBN 3-453-86091-8 .
Web links
- Murder - Sir John intervenes! in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Murder at screenonline
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for Murder - Sir John Intervenes! Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2006 (PDF; test number: 105 123 V / DVD / UMD).
- ^ Filmlexikon.de and Spiegel.de .