A Blueprint for Murder

I agree with the viewer above who was disppointed in the ending. The acting overall was fine, but the plot was too disjointed and nonsensical in parts. My feeling is that the plot shifted whenever necessary to get the film to the next scene - dragging along the viewer whether it's a logical shift or not. For instance, at the beginning of the movie (not ruining anything for viewers!) Joseph Cotton approaches a doctor and asks about performing an autopsy - which would have ended the movie then and there. But no, the doctor says that he doesn't want to get involved, and the idea of an autopsy simply ends on that note. Cotten basically says, "Well OK" and the movie moves on to the next scene. At least the screenwriters could have come up with SOME other excuse to prevent an autopsy from occurring.... Anyway, there are irksome things like that throughout, but if you can ignore them, you can enjoy. As for the ending, it's a bit dull and nonsensical, again, and ends too abruptly.

Rightly released on DVD in a double-bill format, for which it was clearly intended for the bigger screen, and very plainly directed by Andrew Stone, this is nevertheless a gripping thriller which keeps one guessing until the very end. Joseph Cotten had some form as a murderer in previous films and is sufficiently shifty to suggest that he might be one now. In my youth I fancied Jean Peters, a beauty with a brain, and was grieved when she succumbed to Howard Hughes. Here she is excellent as the presumed femme fatale. Gary Merrill is wasted, but Catherine McLeod is fun as his astute wife. The sets are obviously from studio stock, but this hardly matters: this is an Agatha Christie style nail-biter and it hits the spot!

This is a slick Hollywood film from the 1950's made for entertainment purposes. Hollywood at its most confident and smooth, it is made to sell movie theater tickets and give you your money's worth. It delivers in that regard.

Good black and white photography and an a-picture gloss in all production values. Speaking of gloss- Mr. Cotton was one of the classiest of film acting gentlemen, and in this film Ms. Peters matches him in a performance that is not in any way b-list. She is first class all the way here.

All of the supporting performances are excellent. This is a straightforward movie mystery that does not mess with your head- what you see is what it is. I very much enjoyed the linear script that builds momentum into a swelling wave that reaches a crescendo right before everything is resolved.

A nocturne composed by Frederik Chopin in the 1830's matches the dark undertones at work throughout the film as it is applied in a background way as it should be rather than as a boffo film theme. I ordinarily would not recommend such structured classical music for a film but this one is melodic and was deliberately written by Chopin to be quietly dark, so it works.

Is "A Blueprint for Murder" just a glossy, slick Hollywood concoction? Yes but it is well edited and well made overall. It will provide you with entertainment from start to finish.

A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

A clean, old-fashioned murder mystery, brightly lit, and even including a voyage on a cruise ship to Europe like some Betty Davis movie, or Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. It's a crime standard at the end of the film noir era, with a terrific star who never quite fit into any genre very well, Joseph Cotten. It's smart and fast and strong and almost believable, at least until the drawing room high stakes of the end, which is just great movie-making.

Cotten plays Whitney Cameron, and he's visiting his niece in the hospital. Quick facts pour on (and are slightly hard to follow at first): she has some strange affliction, her father (Cameron's brother) died of a strange affliction a few years earlier, and the stepmother is sweet as cherry pie, though she plays a demonically fierce romantic piano. Then the niece suddenly dies, and before Cameron leaves the scene, suspicions arise about the stepmother.

By the way, stepmothers can do terrible things that mothers would never do to their own children, like murder them. And so we are led down that obvious path. Soon, however, we know that the movie can't be quite that simple, and another suspect clarifies. The view is left deciding who is playing the better game of "not me." It's good stuff, very good, though constrained and reasonable, too. We don't always want "reasonable" in a film.

The stepmother is excellent, played by Jean Peters, and a helping couple is also first rate, especially Gary Merrill as a lawyer friend. Merrill was in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "All About Eve," and is partly why those are great films. Peters plays the cheerful innocent here just as she did in a another pair of masterpieces, "Niagara" (with Cotten) and "Pickup on South Street" (a true noir from the same year as this one).

It's Cotten who drives the movie, however, and he has a tone rather similar to his similar "visiting uncle" role in "Shadow of a Doubt." He is, in fact, a kind of soft-spoken, dependable icon in many movies (and later lots of t.v.) and it's because he's so normal that I think he's less adored. But he's exactly what the movie needs, guiding us first through the police investigation and then the informal one of his own. It had the makings of a tightly woven classic.

Why are there so many films that are quite good but not amazing? I think a little of everything, often, but here it's the story itself that is limiting. A great idea, surely, but a little too familiar in its basic plot, and quite simple. A second plot, or another suspect, or another murder along the way would have been just fine. I think the directing (by Andrew Stone) is competent but lacks vision, and an unwillingness to push the edges a little. It proceeds, and we don't want movies to simply move along. There are, however, some excellent scenes, like one in the police office early on where the two leading men are led from one desk to another, from one group of cops to another, in a flowing, backward moving long take. It's a lesson in first rate cinematography, actually.

And in fact the movie is totally enjoyable, never slow, expertly done, with a good cast.

This is a superb and sophisticated murder mystery. Joseph Cotten is in peak form as the lead man, Whitney Cameron, who is called to the bedside of his young niece, who is dying in hospital. The child dies of mysterious convulsions, enigmatically and inexplicably crying out: 'Don't touch my feet!' The plot thickens from there, and the strange cry is discovered to have a meaning after all. This is a first rate early fifties noir with Cotton, Jean Peters as his sister-in-law, and Gary Merrill as his lawyer friend. It is excellently directed by Andrew Stone and should be better known than it is. The story is cleverly developed, and the mystery lasts up until the very end of the film. The question is: who poisoned the niece with strychnine, and why? And who will be next? Cotton is urbane, reassuring, and very solid in the main role. Jean Peters is rather more arch than usual, with a character portrayal which is intentionally ambivalent, just to keep us all guessing. One does not know whether she is a femme fatale or not, and the whole point is that no one knows, even within the story. This is a most ingenious whodunit which will not disappoint any viewer.