A Blueprint for Murder

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.

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.

... that probably being that you just have to hope things go your way in a couple of categories. First, you need to be an upstanding member of the community - but not too upstanding so that you are a target for some ambitious D.A. Second, you need to commit the crime in a jurisdiction where either the police are too lazy or too busy to look past the superficial details, where they accept whatever an overworked coroner says - accident, suicide, some sudden illness. Third, and this is where the killer in this film does not luck out, you need to make sure the grieving relatives are not the inquisitive persistent type, respectable and able to get the attention of those in charge of criminal investigations.

Enter Whitney 'Cam' Cameron (Joseph Cotten), who makes a darned good villain as well as a protagonist, but here he's the good guy - or at least so he says. He lost his brother suddenly to encephalitis several years before, and now his niece has also died suddenly. The random remarks of Cam's little nephew, Cam's own inquisitive mind, and the fact that his close friend's wife is a writer of murder mysteries gets Cam suspecting his late brother's wife Lynn of murder. I'll let you see how everything unwinds yourself and who is brought to justice. Cotten narrates for almost the entire film, since he is trying to convince himself this woman is guilty even as he tries to prove her guilt to others - he has always liked her since his brother married her after the death of his first wife, thought she was a good stepmother to his brother's kids, and doesn't want to believe something so hideous, but he has to protect his brother's one surviving child, his nephew - again, so he says.

One thing that has changed since 1953, besides the fact that fashionable ladies and gents all wore hats ,is that a person could die in the hospital - quite possibly due to a fatal mix up by the hospital pharmacy - and that an investigating relative would be met by cooperative hospital personnel and not by an army of stonewalling attorneys and form letters. At least, that's one thing I noticed as Cam went about the hospital where his niece died trying to get the facts.

This is a very good mystery, yet Fox relegated it to half a bill on a Midnight Movie DVD. Give it a chance. It is not the fare usually associated with Midnight Movies - matrons baking cookies by day and turned ax murderer by night, wildlife run amok due to a nuclear blast, etc. Recommended.

I love a good murder mystery, and while I can't really put this film at the top end of its genre; A Blueprint for Murder offers an interesting story, a conniving femme fatale and a modus operandi ripe for questions being asked. The plot is very straight forward in the way that it plays out, and it has to be said that there's not a great deal of tension or suspense; but the characters are interesting and the film never becomes boring. The plot, which focuses on a woman who is suspected of murdering both her step-daughter and her husband due to her husband's will, which states that she will inherit his fortune if she outlives his children, is not as shocking now as it probably was in 1953, though that doesn't particularly make the film any less effective. James Cotten is the hero of the piece, and while I believe that he is put to better use as the villain, such as he was ten years earlier in Hitchcock's masterpiece 'Shadow of a Doubt', he does fit into this role well. He is joined by Jean Peters who doesn't look like someone could murder a child, but that really is a credit to the film as it keeps the mystery as to whether she did it or not in place much better than if a more foreboding actress was chosen. The mystery itself is never all that mysterious; the film doesn't offer up any red herrings or opportunities for a twist, and it's more a case of 'did she or didn't she', which is a shame. It boils down to the sort of ending that you would expect, though it plays out well and the ending is certainly the most tense part of the film. Overall, this is a very decent little fifties B-movie that is unlikely to overly impress anyone; but it's entertaining enough, and I enjoyed watching it.