Hitchcock was way ahead of the curve on 3-D moviemaking

Dial M for Murder at Tiff Bell Lightbox

Legend has it Alfred Hitchcock considered it Dial G for Gimmick when Warner Bros. instructed him to shoot Dial M for Murderin 3-D in the summer of 1953.

It would be an understatement to say he wasn’t a fan of the process, with its cumbersome cameras and nerdy two-tone glasses.

Pro that he was, the old master not only tried 3-D, he found ways to make it leap off the screen the way it’s supposed to — such as in the film’s famous scissors scene, which cuts as sharp as Bunuel’s blade.

Dial M for Murder, now playing at TIFF Bell Lightbox with a handsomely restored print and updated third dimension, would be his only feature foray into 3-D and his first to star Grace Kelly.

Dial M rarely makes the Top 10 lists of Hitch fans, and didn’t appear at all in Sight & Sound’s Top 250 Greatest Films of all Time list of this past summer, which was topped by Hitch’s Vertigo. Adapted from Frederick Knott’s successful stage play (Knott also wrote the screenplay), Dial M opened in 1954 to something less than thunderous applause: Variety sniffed that it “talks up much more suspense than it actually delivers.” The film was left in the dust of that year’s more successful Hitchcock film, Rear Window. Ensuing years have been kinder to Dial M, with appreciation growing for more than just its still-potent 3-D shocks. The film showcases some of Hitchcock’s finest tropes, including his belief that suspense is all in the waiting (the killer behind the curtain) and his love of skewering “perfect crime” advocates. Dial M’s perfect-crime folly comes through the avarice of Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), a former tennis ace married to the wealthy Margot (Grace Kelly). He’s been plotting her demise, having learned of her affair with crime novelist Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings).

Tony blackmails a shifty former schoolmate named Swann (Anthony Dawson) into participating in a murder scheme that seems deceptively simple: a dialed telephone, a secret key, a lady’s early bedtime routine and a boys’ night out.

What Tony doesn’t count on is a faulty watch, a clumsy oaf, a curious copper (the great John Williams) and those infernal scissors.

It’s a tidy thriller about untidy humans, and a welcome demonstration of 3-D that literally cuts through the hype.