This is definitely my favourite Hitchcock thriller. Adapted from Frederick Knott's equally enduring stage play; Ray Milland is wonderfully suave, debonaire and calculating as "Tony" who goes to some effort to enact the perfect murder to despatch his cheating wife (Grace Kelly). He hires petty crook Anthony Dawson to do the deed, but it all goes wrong and she ends up alive, well and leaving him with an unforeseen headache. Enter, in my view, the star of this film - John Williams ("Chief Inspector Hubbard") a resolutely persistent terrier of a police officer who is not at all convinced by the explanations he is getting and now we play the mother of all cat-and-mouse games. Dimitri Tiomkin's score adds tons to this expertly paced, thoroughly engrossing story that builds to a cleverly developed crescendo.
