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.

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.

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 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.

After the mysterious death of his niece, Cam Cameron (Joseph Cotton) begins to suspect that the child's stepmother may be responsible. When the autopsy reveals the presence of strychnine in the girl's system, he's convinced that his dead brother's wife, Lynn Cameron (Jean Peters), is the only person with both a motive and the opportunity. Cam now begins to fear for the life of his nephew. He's got to act fast because Lynn intends to take the young boy to Europe.

While I've given A Blueprint for Murder a positive rating and I readily admit I mostly enjoyed the film, much of what I've got to write about is going to seem negative. As good as it is, it has far too many problems to be called great. A Blueprint for Murder is about the most straight forward mystery/thriller I've run across. And that's part of its biggest weakness. There's no mystery regarding the killer's identity. It's made quite clear early on that Lynn killed her niece. There seemed to be a half-hearted attempt to use Cam as a red-herring, but anyone with half a brain could figure out in 3.2 seconds that Cam couldn't have committed the crime - he wasn't there. Maybe I just imagined the light of suspicion being pointed at Cam because I so wanted to be thrown some kind of curve ball. Even though the killer is known, director Andrew L. Stone is able to wring some tension out of the final scenes as Cam tries to prove Lynn is a killer. You get the feeling that even though you know Lynn is responsible for the girl's death, she just might get away with it. These scenes are, however, undermined by an ending that's terribly rushed with action that, unfortunately, takes place off-screen. Too bad, because A Blueprint for Murder could have been much better.

One of the real highlights for me in A Blueprint for Murder was the acting. The performance of Jean Peters as Lynn Cameron is enlightening. I'm not overly familiar with her work, but she's marvelous as the apparent caring, wonderful parent who is hiding a cold, unfeeling heart. I may have to look for more of her work.