The wrong key

Dial M for Murder

(1954)

Hey, this is a lot better than I remembered. Yes, it depends on an implausible clockwork plot, but you say that as if it were a bad thing. Robert Cummings spends most of his time trying to play James Stewart, who would indeed have been a better choice for the role, but there's a nice dynamic of guilt for the relatively innocent parties that helps us suspend our disbelief. Ray Milland is an appropriately oily villain, and Grace Kelly is, well, Grace Kelly. (She would have been 80 yesterday, by the way.)

And let's talk about John Williams, excellent here and in The Paradine Case and To Catch a Thief, though this is the first time I've given him any credit. A born Brit-police-inspector-on-film.

A film that not only could not be made now, when phones can go anywhere, but couldn't even have been made ten years later, when everyone had an extension phones in the bedroom.