This is a great movie, a classic, a must see, real class. A man, Tony (Ray Milland) married Margot (Grace Kelly) for her money but without love. She loved him at first, but one day she fell in love with Mark (Robert Cummings), but they left each other when he went back to America. Tony knew of it, he knew she didn't love him anymore, and started thinking that if she left him he would be left with nothing. He's gotten used to having money, so he carefully plans to get rid of her. We hear his intention when he calls to his house a con-man, maybe even a murderer (did he kill that woman or did he give her the drugs that killed her?), a man he has followed for a long time. Tony knows all about him, and proposes to pay him to kill his wife. The plan is simple: Tony will go out with Mark and Margot will be alone at home. Swan will find the key to the house hidden in the stairs, hide inside and wait. At a specific hour Tony would phone home to get Margot to the telephone. At that point Swan will come out and kill her. Toni will come home later with Mark, and he'll have a perfect alibi for the whole evening. As Mark the writer said before things in real life never go according to one's plan, and Toni finds out soon how true that is. At first Margot didn't like the idea of staying home, then she didn't die because in the struggle, while the man was strangling her, she touched with her hand the scissors she had forgotten to put away and stabbed him. He died instead, so Toni quickly thinks of a new plan: to have her arrested and executed for murder. He quickly arranges things to make it look like she invited him in and then killed him because he was blackmailing her for her secret love for Mark. He really thinks of everything: it does look like she did it on purpose, and she is found guilty in the trial and sentenced to be executed. Toni doesn't know he made one mistake: according to his plan Swan was to put back the key after the murder, while going out, so when he saw him dead he believed that Swan had that key in his pockets. He took it and put it back into Margot's purse. Unfortunately for him Swan had put it back right after using it, before entering the apartment, so the key in his pocket was of his own place. This chief inspector really reminds me of Columbo, and not for his coat but for the fact that he suspected something wasn't right when he found no key in the dead man's pockets, that was not normal, how could he have no keys at all? He had no explanation, but by chance he also found out that the key in Margot's purse was not the right one for her door, so little by little he put things together. Also, Toni had been spending the cash money he should have given Swan, raising suspicions, although the evil genius had a convincing answer for this: it was the money Margot had taken to pay her blackmailer. He was about to win but the chief inspector saved Margot's life with a simple trick. He tried to find out who between husband and wife knew about the key in the stairs. He did, and by taking that key now he proved his guilt.
A great movie, Hitchcock's fame was not for nothing (he appears in a picture, shown twice very clearly, sitting at a table with young Toni and young Swan).
In Italy: Il delitto perfetto
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