Alfred Hitchcock and the 54-minute intermission

We don't see intermissions in movies anymore -- your occasional throwback Quentin Tarantino movie notwithstanding -- because studios think we can suffer through the increasing lengths they're throwing at us. That's more true in some cases than in others. Plus there's the fact that it's just, like, old-fashioned, ya know?

Back in the day, when you were working your way through some ungodly three hour and 40 minute epic, you met the intermission at about the two-hour mark with no small measure of relief -- even if you were enjoying the movie in question. (The only time I remember an intermission in any movie I saw in the theater was when I was taken to the 174-minute The Sound of Music as a kid probably under ten.)

So I thought it was sort of funny when I was watching Dial M for Murder on Wednesday night and the intermission came after 54 minutes of movie.

I don't recall ever seeing an intermission in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, probably because his movies were tight and suspenseful and did not require his audiences to get up and stretch their legs and refill their drink. 

Dial M for Murder, at an hour and 45 minutes, should have been no exception. And that's how I found it: relatively short, suspenseful and propulsive, even if almost all the activity takes place inside one apartment.

As a matter of fact, its relatively brief running time was one of the key factors in me choosing it for a mid-week movie on a day I had been into the office and was therefore a little more tired than I might have ordinarily been.

And yet before I'd even been sitting there for an hour, Hitch and Warner Brothers told me I needed to take a break.

I find myself wondering if the fact that I saw this on Kanopy is some explanation. I never know how movies are sourced on Kanopy, but it is frequently not the same version that went around on DVD back in the day or that you would find on other streaming services. So perhaps the intermission version of Dial M for Murder was not the version seen by people who watched this on DVD, or VHS before that.

But it's clear that at some point, Dial M had an intermission, which I think is funny for its length.

And that's all I have to say about that.