best performance of her life... and she's had some good ones

Ordinary People, hell of a movie. Great performances by Hirsch and Timothy Hutton.

Book was good too

Ordinary People R 1980 ‧ Drama/Family ‧ 2h 4m YouTube From $3.99 Google Play Movies & TV From $3.99 Amazon Prime Video From $3.99 Fandango at Home From $4.99

Conrad and his father learn how to adjust; the mother does not. It’s not often we get characters who face those kinds of challenges on the screen, nor directors who seek them out as Robert Redford did. Ordinary People is an intelligent, perceptive, and deeply moving film.

He does have a few friends. The girl from the hospital (Dinah Manoff) is cheerful, bright, but running from something. The girl from choir practice (Elizabeth McGovern) is sincere, kind, and able to be honest. In trying to figure them out, Conrad gets help in figuring out himself.

At the center is the surviving son, Conrad. He is utterly tortured as the film begins; his life is ruled by fear, low self-esteem, and the correct perception that he is not loved by his mother. He sees a psychiatrist (Judd Hirsch) after school. He blames himself for his brother’s death.

Ordinary People exists through the autumn and winter of one year. And what I admire most about the film is that it really does develop its characters and the changes they go through. The film is the story of these people and their situation, it shows them changing, learning, and growing.

There’s the wife, (Mary Tyler Moore. She does a wonderful job of running her house, which looks like it’s out of the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. At some fundamental level she’s selfish, she can’t really give of herself, and she has, in fact, always loved the dead older son more.

There’s the father, (Donald Sutherland) who is one of those men who wants to do and feel the right things, in his own awkward way. He’s a successful Chicago attorney who has always taken the love of his family for granted.

There’s the surviving son, Conrad, played by a wonderfully natural actor named Timothy Hutton. who always lived in his big brother’s shadow, who tried to commit suicide after the accident, who has now just returned from a psychiatric hospital.

Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980) begins when a family loses its older son in a boating accident. That leaves three still living at home in a perfectly manicured suburban existence, and the movie is about how they finally have to deal with the ways they really feel about one another.

We are filming today - for Back Up - today, we visit the Prosecutor’s office as they try to figure out who killed Margaret!

EXCELLENT movie by Alfred Hitchcock! It was a real suspenseful movie that you couldn’t leave for a bathroom break. 😊

"It was the least I could do." "And I always do the least I could do."

Moss Mabry was the costume designer on Dial M. I thought Grace Kelly's wardrobe was by Helen Rose like it was in Rear Window, but apparently Mabry did the design for the whole cast, beautiful red cocktail dress included. Edit Heath did the absolute bangers Kelly wore in To Catch a Thief.

Saw it again two years ago! Complex! 🗝️🔑

Love That Bob...

Through some libraries, Kanopy.com - Free

I love all that stuff. As a cinephile, I know way too much useless information about movies.

Thanks for mentioning that.

Came here to say that. And that shot taken from the angle of the body in the trunk as the maid cleans up…whew!

That's one of those amazing Edith Head dresses, right? Want.

The actor who played Swan also played a minor villain in a James Bond flick AND was the dead body in another Hitchcock film, The Trouble With Harry, a quirky fave.

I don't agree that the slimey villain, really is the villain. He's more of, another victim, of the would be murderer.

"Dial M" and "Rope" were both originally stage productions, so the one room makes sense in keeping with the source material. There's also a certain heightened amount of tension built into the action taking place in a confined space.

waiting for the 4K or Criterion Collection

LOVE Grace Kelly... LOVE her. started collecting her movies, 6 so far

Dial M For Murder images

Classic

I saw this in 3-D at a Hitchcock film festival years ago, and it was one of the few instances where I felt that the added dimension enhanced the experience. It almost felt like we were inside the space.

So confined to a single room--a few exceptions--that "Dial M" could be a grand stage play.

nice art piece!

If you haven’t seen it in 3D, you haven’t seen it!

Hitchcock may have been an asshole but he was an amazingly talented asshole

Fantastic movie, and Grace Kelly can actually act!

… and Grace Kelly

Good movie

Dial M for Murder has a romping plot, a gloriously slimy villain and, thanks to the fact that the action is mostly constrained to one room,– some of the weirdest, trickiest camera work of Hitchcock's career.

That's a crazy good movie poster.

Isn't "Rope" all done in 4 shots stitched together to look like one ?

Dial M For Murder images

Dial M For Murder images

Dial M for Murder PG 1954 ‧ Thriller/Mystery ‧ 1h 45m Xumo Play Free PLEX Free Amazon Prime Video YouTube From $3.79 Google Play Movies & TV From $3.79 Apple TV From $3.99 Fandango at Home From $3.99

Dial M for Murder has a romping plot, a gloriously slimy villain and, thanks to the fact that the action is mostly constrained to one room,– some of the weirdest, trickiest camera work of Hitchcock's career.

The painfully long time it takes Margot to hang up the phone before the murderer strikes; Grace Kelly's neck bulging over the tourniquet as he strangles her; her groping for a weapon and then the scissors stabbing into his back and getting knocked deeper in when he falls to the ground.

There's a great moment where the camera points down over Wendice as he explains his plan, making the room look like a crime scene, even before any foul play has taken place. Also canny is the slow tracking shot that follows him around the room as he describes discovering Margot's affair.

Ray Milland is frequently noted for his cold, calculating turn as the husband, while Grace Kelly is praised for her performance as the vulnerable yet resilient victim. The film is seen as a masterful adaptation of the stage play; Hitchcock maximizes the tension within the confines of a single room.

Hitchcock added depth and intimacy to the single-set, apartment crime, making the audience feel part of the planning and the action. The film is celebrated for its perfect murder setup, where the audience knows the plot, but the tension comes from watching it unfold and subsequently go wrong.

Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954) is widely regarded by critics as a technically masterful, claustrophobic suspense piece. It is praised for its intricate, play-like plot, brilliant camera work, and cold, calculating performance by Ray Milland.