BIG'S BIG MOVIE LIST

     The theatrical trailer for this film is different from traditional trailers because, rather than showing footage from the film itself, the trailer establishes a sort of prologue to the actual film. The main character of the trailer, David Kentley (Dick Hogan) is talking in Central Park with his soon-to-be-fiancee Janet (Joan Chandler), casually saying “I'll see you at Brandon's party tonight” before exiting for a 2:30 appointment. Smash cut to Rupert Cadell (Jimmy Stewart), who informs the audience that that would be the last time Janet (or anyone) would see David alive, because his “appointment” is actually a meeting with Brandon (John Dall) and his friend Philip (Farley Granger), during which David is strangled to death by the two men with a length of rope (this may seem like a spoiler, but the film begins with the final seconds of David's life).

     Viewing David as an intellectually inferior human being, Brandon and Philip enact their own blend of nietzschean eugenics when they deem themselves superior and therefor entitled to what Brandon feels is the “privilege” of murder. In a perverse display, the two stow David's body in a large wooden chest and proceed to host a dinner party with David's friends and family dining on top of the chest. When their former prep school housemaster Rupert Cadell shows up to the party, he almost immediately senses that something is amiss, and begins to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding the evening.

    Technically speaking, this is a beautifully executed film. Shot entirely in a New York apartment set with moving walls, every frame is intricately orchestrated and the whole thing is edited together to look as though the movies is a series of incredibly long takes (though some of the transitional trick shots employed between takes are distracting). Dialog is clean and the story is very well balanced. However, the whole experience loses its luster over time, fizzling into a fairly disappointing ending, and by the end of this 80 minute adaptation of a Patrick Hamilton play, I felt like I sat through a significantly longer experience.