Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to five Minute Film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer Library System.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome back to five Minute Film Finder. My name is Tracy, and today I'm here with. Hold on, hold on. Ring, ring. Who's on the other end of the line?
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Samuel.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Yay. This is a fun bit. We could just stop the podcast right there. Click, click. Hang up the phone. Hang up the rotary phone. Hold. I should have dialed your number.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Can you do the rotary sound effect?
[00:00:33] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Best I can do.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Maybe we should get Ben on sound effects for.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we should get Ben on some Foley work for the phone work in this if he's not happy with. With mine.
In case you just think I've lost my mind. I have. But we are also doing two murder mystery films surrounding the telephone today.
So a couple of quick questions for you, Samuel. Do you like murder mystery films or noirs? I guess also because one of these is a full blown film noir, I
[00:01:07] Speaker A: would say, yeah, they're fun. They're fun.
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Short answer. Yes.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: And the next is. What are your feelings about the telephone?
Good invention bad. Should we have shut Alexander Graham Bell down?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Early Net negative.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: It seems like our lives would be better if we'd stayed with Morse code and the telegraph.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah. You could just imagine, you know, waiting days to find out something that happened and life would be simpler.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I would just like to have everyone telegraphing me for their Colleen Hoover holds. I think that'd be really fun.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
You know, the upside for library customers is they probably get holds for. We'd probably hold them on. Hold onto them for like two weeks. Right.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Maybe we.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Would you give them time to receive the telegraph and then come back? I mean, telegraphs were actually pretty quick.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: I would say they're not too bad if they were local telegraphs.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: We're acting like this is a pony express.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: We won't go off the rails when we actually start the podcast. And then we've already done it. Do you maybe want to go ahead and we can jump into one of our movies?
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Okay. So I did. Sorry, Wrong number. A film from 1948, which can be found on Kanopy.
Directed by Anatole Litvak.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Okay. Thank you, Tracy, for confirming my pronunciation.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: I did look it up beforehand. Yes. Thank you.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: A born Ukrainian director.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Okay. Yes. This is the research we do for the pod.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: This film.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: It also stars Burt Lancaster and Barbara Stanwyck.
And before I go into kind of the background of the film, I'll Just say the film largely revolves around Barbara Stanwyck's character is bedridden in the film.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Sort of.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Sort of.
And so the action for her largely takes place through the telephone.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: She is answering calls. She's making calls. And she is trying to get to the bottom of a call she overheard back when you could intrude on someone's line.
For those of you who don't know which. I mean, I never lived in that.
No.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: But I've watched enough 80s movies to be familiar with the concept of a party line.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
And so she's trying to. She overhears a conversation about murdering someone, and so she tries to get to the bottom of it and spoiler alert, she's the person who they're trying to murder.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: She is. She is. She is too.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Which is in the description on Canopy, so I don't feel too bad about that. Spoiler.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: The IMDb plot synopsis calls her a neurotic, bedridden wife, which I think is really rude. Yes, Very rude.
I was like, she's got other stuff going on, though. She is great at being a neurotic, bedridden wife.
We talked about it a little bit before we started that. So much of this movie really hangs on Barbara Stanwyck being really great at smoking cigarettes and talking on the telephone.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Because so much of it is just focused on her face as she gets information from other people. And she's so dynamic at just being like, kind of a witch.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Who is talking on the phone and being mad at people and wondering where her very handsome husband, Burt Lancaster, is. That was the other thing I was going to say. Burt Lancaster is so handsome in this movie. It's actually ridiculous. And that is one of the other points of intrigue in this movie too, because she does steal her husband from somebody else in a flashback.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Very like. I mean, very blatantly.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: She is Mrs. Steal your man.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
It's incredible. It's an incredible flashback scene which is like kind of where you get any sort of non.
Barbara Stanwyck in a bed talking on a phone. Action is in the flashback scenes.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Yes. And I will say this was originally based on a radio play which is mentioned at the beginning of the film in very good typeset as well, which I really enjoyed. It was like, radio play by Lucille Fletcher. And I was like, good for Lucille Fletcher. But I think the original radio play was a lot of the actual talking on the phone stuff. And then the flashback scenes were added to the movie to kind of flesh it out. Fun fact, the original radio play was done by Agnes Moorhead. Do you know who Agnes Moorhead is?
[00:05:37] Speaker A: No, I do not.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Did you ever watch Bewitched, the television show? Not really. Okay. She is Endora on Bewitched, which is the mom on Bewitched, and she's evil and fabulous. So I bet she was also great at being evil and fabulous on the phone in the original radio play.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: I bet.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: I just wanted to put that out there.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we gotta track down this radio play. It sounds like.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Five minute radio play finder in our next podcast.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: There we go. Let's make this even more niche.
Let's see how many fewer listeners we can get.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: We're on a race to zero.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: We're gonna bring. Then we're gonna bring down these dumpers.
He's pumping his fist. He's into it.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So Stanwyck, incredible performance, which she was nominated for an Academy Award, for, which
[00:06:24] Speaker B: I think she should have been.
This movie works on the sole power of her looking amazing when she raises her eyebrow.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Thank God.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's a really great performance.
And I think it maybe outshines the movie so much that what was I found fascinating about this film was she was nominated for an Academy Award. It seems like the film was like pretty well regarded critically when I think it was, but it's been forgotten to history, I think, unlike our other film for today.
And so it. But it is. But it is a noir. So if you like that, if that scratches an itch for you, I think this would be a great film to watch because it's.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a pure blooded noir movie. And so there. There is like, this feels like so much of what a parody of noir would be like later. Like, it feels like this would be.
I think Wilhelm has probably screamed somewhere.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And what I can say.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: I can't hear Wilhelm anymore.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: What I can say is that this has been used in a parody of noir. So this is one of my notes that I looked at. So clips from this movie have been used in other movies since.
And I think you will enjoy this list of movies that have clipped it. Okay. So 1982's dead men don't Wear Plaid. The Carl Reiner movie clips from this are in there. It's in the 1991 Kenneth Branagh movie Dead Again.
Just him and Emma Thompson.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: And it's in 2014's Jack Ryan shadow Recruits.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: I loved this list.
That's.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: That's eclectic, to say the least.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yes. But to say this film has, though I feel like it's not as much in the popular consciousness, it does have a legacy down the line. Yeah. It also was remade in the 1980s for television with sitcom star Loni Anderson. So, like, it has a tail.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: But I would say it's fizzled a little bit.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: But I think if you are a person who likes really classic noirs, if you like movies that are 120 minutes of a woman looking fabulous while on the phone, which I do.
It's a good watch.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. It definitely is. And I think there is even a social commentary aspect to this, which is kind of circling back to our point about do I think phones were a positive? It does seem to be a film that's like, let's talk about, Are phones good for society?
The scene where she's talking to her doctor, the doctor's date is constantly like, that phone again. That phone again. And the opening scroll of the movie, which I would like to read, with
[00:09:03] Speaker B: apologies to Wilhelm, please, a dramatic reading. Samuel.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Oh, Jesus.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: I need you to commit.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Okay, okay.
In the tangled networks of a great city, the telephone is the unseen link between a million lives.
It is the servant of our common needs, the confidant of our inmost secrets.
Life and happiness wait upon its rings and horror and loneliness and death.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Dun, dun, dun.
So I forgot, when it said and death at the end, I out loud went, oh, girl.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: It is very. It's a dramatic film.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: It's a dramatic film.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: She's a very sick woman.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
The word that came.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Barbara Stanwyck yells us a lot near the end of the movie.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: She is a sick woman. She's a sick woman.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: She's a very sick woman.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yes. Melodrama is what came to mind when I watched this film.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: It's an extreme melodrama, but that's fun because we don't get a lot of pure D melodramas in the year of our Lord 2026.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: The one last thing that I do want to say, and I did mention this to you, is we do get what I call a dude wears my car moment in this movie where someone does say the title of the film and it is the last line of the movie. And I out loud went a.
And then it went, the end.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: The end. Yeah.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think it's a fun watch. It's a short watch, too. It's under 90 minutes.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: So if you just want to throw something on.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: Maybe consider. Sorry, wrong number. On canopy.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think you don't have to pay super close attention because it is exposition heavy. Exposition heavy.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah. But you can look at all the gadot.
Yes.
Okay, well, we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back with our second film.
All right. And welcome back to Five Minute Film Finder. We are going to talk about our second movie and I'm going to take the lead on this one. And I'll have Wilhelm start the timer for my dramatic reading of the title of the film, which is the Dial M for murder from 1954. This is, of course an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I have not watched a lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies because I think he seems like an uncool hang and that makes it harder for me to watch a film.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: He is an uncool hang.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But he is a legend and he's a legend for a reason. And it's because he makes super tight thrillers. I will say the IMDb plot synopsis on this, I think, you know, I am obsessed with these.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Was not what I would expect for this.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: This is what it is.
A London playboy plots the perfect murder of his rich unfaithful wife. Would you say that's the plot of this film?
No, it's not what I would think either.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get playboy vibes from.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: Neither did I. So I was like, is he a playboy? I don't know. That's not how he read to me. So I thought that was crazy. The playboy in question is Ray Milland, who is famous for the Lost Weekend. He is the husband. I can't remember his character name right now. It's completely left. Tony.
He is Tony and he is married to Grace Kelly, who you may know from being a literal princess.
Also, she's in To Catch a Thief, which is one of my favorite.
So good. Her and Cary Grant.
But you start off the movie and Grace Kelly is with a man and they are acting amorously is what I will say. And then you very quickly find out that that man is not her husband.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: It is a band that she has had an on and off affair with.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: And they are a mystery writer.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: From America.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Yeah. That's one of the things I saw is like, really don't plan your perfect murder when your girl's other man is a mystery writer. Is a literal mystery writer.
And they are thinking about maybe telling her husband about their affair.
But, oh, they're kind of wishy washy on it. So I think they're going to Dinner with him.
He backs out at the last minute. Right. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, nefarious plots start to happen.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: He invites the man over and he goes. What? I called in my own mind, full James Bond villain.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Where he explains his entire plan to murder his wife.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Hilariously enough to someone who has played not one, but two Bond villains.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Oh, wow. I didn't.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Okay, okay. That actor. I wrote it in my notes. Anthony Dawson was in both Dr. No and to Russia With Love.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Okay, so he was a Bond villain later on.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: But they hatch this plan to murder his wife. And just before I think this plan is going to happen, Max and him were talking and he's like, oh, well, I'd never try to actually kill someone, because you can write a perfect murder, but what it doesn't consider is the human element. Yeah, right.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And then I feel like we end up getting a lot of the human element.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: This murder goes wrong.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: And I don't know that I'd call it. Hi, Jigs.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Something ensues.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Cat and mouse. Yeah. That's a great way to put it. Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Tom and Jerry, if you will.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Tom and Jerry. Some hygiene.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: We're a little loose today.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
If Hitchcock makes tight thrillers, we make very loose podcasts.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. We're the opposite of Hitchcock. That's probably why I don't want to hang out.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: That's why he makes the movies and we don't.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Yes. I will say one of my big notes on this outside of the plot is that we should make movies colorful again.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: This movie looks amazing. It's not filmed in Technicolor. I think it's called Warner Color, maybe.
It looked unbelievable.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're not talking about, like, majestic shots. A lot of it happens within an apartment.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: No, but truly, like, there's, like, a yellow vase that just pops. Grace Kelly in one of the early scenes is in this beautiful red dress, and it's just vivid and everything is stunning. And especially since all of this is all this, like, really shocking murder. And then there's all these really shocking colors. I think it just works so great. Also, there's, like, a weird court dream sequence in this.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: She's the whole. Her whole trial for murder. Not to spoil it, she didn't murder anyone, but things happen.
It's like this weird, like, Hieronymous Bosch hellscape kind of background that's like. It's so such an artistic way to breeze through what would be a really Long thing to film and just be like, boy, that must have been scary, huh? And that's. That takes maybe three minutes. Yeah. And it's done. The styling of this film is just so incredible. The acting is incredible.
The actor who plays the inspector, Wilhelm, is screaming somewhere. Have I ever listened to him? No, it's not because I don't love him. It's just because I'm difficult.
The actor who plays the inspector was probably my favorite character in the movie. Oh, he's.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: He's delightful.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: He no less than swaggers in his first scene over halfway through the movie.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: The movie ends with him literally combing his. Combing his mustache. No, please jump in from. Like, jump in, Samuel. We're chatting. Yeah. It's just.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I was not expecting that closing shot, which. But I was like, this seems about right.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: You know, it made me laugh so, so hard.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: He is in one of my favorite movies from my childhood, which is Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: With Humphrey Bogart. He plays her father.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And he's very good at playing, like, uptight British man.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: And he is selling that in this movie.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There. There are these scenes, I think, particularly with the mystery writer, Right. When they're kind of closing in on.
On the villain. Right.
He seems so put out by this mystery writer, like, just get interfering and, like, intruding upon his investigation because he has his own hijinks. And then now the mystery writer has his hijinks and their hijinks are colliding. And he just seems like. Just the looks, the glances, the way he carries himself.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: It's like he has a line in it. I can't remember exactly what it is, but he's like, nothing worse than to years of police work than a gifted novice or something, or like a gifted amateur or something like that. And you're like, he has had someone try to. Agatha Christie one of his cases before, and he is so put out by all of these people.
But I think this is sort of one of those movies. Or like, Columbo also works this way where you see who does the murder at the beginning, and then it all sort of devolves. And this movie felt there's even like a.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: And One More thing kind of line in there. Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yes. So I was like. I feel like Columbo was really inspired by Dial in for Murder.
Lots of things were inspired by Dial in for Murder. This has been like a pastiche in so many things, but it's one of those things where, like, you know, everything that's going to happen from the beginning. Sort of things go awry. But you've known the whole plan. You see everything happening. There's no murder mystery in this, really.
It is a murder that you as the viewer know everything about and the characters who are a part of it are the ones who are not privy to all the details.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: So it's interesting to sort of watch all these people work it out.
And I think it.
It's thrilling to watch.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the, the visual, the visuals of it. I watched this movie somewhat distracted. And so when you do that, I think you miss, like the camera will tell you things that say and. Sorry, wrong number.
You can kind of listen. You can almost listen to that movie. This movie I think you have to watch because the visual clues are so important for how everyone's piecing together this murder and whether it be prior, during, or after the fact. Right.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: So I will say, and this is a fun fact that I found while looking up some stuff on it, part of that is possibly because this originally was meant to be put out in the 1950s version of 3D.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: So certain things were supposed to literally pop out at you with that double film style.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: But apparently on the original showings of it, it was really unpopular for this film, so it ended up primarily showing in 2D. But it was supposed to have 3D elements in it. So that's probably why so many of those visual elements do feel like they are popping out at you. It's because they were originally filmed to do just that.
My. My one final note here is that for just a cool year for Alfred Hitchcock, we all agree, not a cool guy. This came out the same year as Rear Window.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: So just like a great year to be Alfred Hitchcock.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
Now, yeah. No Rear Window. I would. It's probably one of my favorite Hitchcock films. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: I was just talking to someone about this the other day, which is crazy because I love Jimmy Stewart.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm a big Jimmy Stewart fan. I just found out my.
In preparation for this episode, my, my.
My manager, dial him for Murder is her favorite Hitchcock film. So 54 was a good year for. For people who work at my branch, I guess.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: I guess just like, just gotta go back. Yeah, no, we don't. No, we don't. But if you maybe want to visit some.
I don't want to say old timey films. That feels rude. Classic films, classic films. Both of these films are on Canopy along with a ton of other great classic options. There's always great stuff on the sites, so be sure that you're poking around in there and seeing what there is to see. Thank you so much for talking with me today, Samuel. This was fun and we'll see you next time.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah, bye.
Five Minute Film Finder is a digital program brought to you by Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma. All opinions expressed in this episode are those of the host and not those of the organization.
Five Minute Film Finder is produced, recorded and mixed by Ben C. Theme music by Ben C.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments, please email podcastioneerlibrarysystem.org Remember to like, review and subscribe.
Thanks for listening.
