Largely remembered as an unsuccessful experiment — the whole film consists of sustained eight-minute takes without camera cuts, which perhaps accounts for the ragged tone of the performances — this Alfred Hitchcock melodrama is an adaption of a play by Patrick Hamilton (Gaslight, The Charmer) about the Leopold and Loeb murder case.
Academic detective James Stewart comes on like Columbo as he deduces that two of his pupils — John Dall and Farley Granger, who have a then-unusual quasi-gay relationship — have impulsively murdered a third. The trickery is still distracting, but there are hints in this 1948 film of the perversity that will yield Psycho, Strangers On A Train, Vertigo and Rear Window, so it’s a must for Hitch collectors.