Compulsion DVD, 1959

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MovieMail's Review

This fictionalised account of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case - the second, after Hitchcock’s filming of Patrick Hamtilon’s play, Rope - is a superb slice of late-fifties Hollywood. The opening scene pitches us straight into the intense relationship between Judd Steiner and Artie Straus (Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman, both terrific), two wealthy, precocious college kids whose pursuit of criminal thrills is - the film implies - the result of too much Nietzsche and too little parental love. It’s really a film of two halves: before Orson Welles appears, and afterwards. His turn as the defending lawyer Jonathan Wilk - a thinly veiled Clarence Darrow, who defended Leopold and Loeb - is a showstopper: it’s as if Welles came off the set of Touch of Evil (filmed the previous year), donned a neat hairpiece and a halo, and got stuck in. His closing argument in the courtroom, a soliloquy bulging with gravitas, is old-school Wellesian grandstanding - although an actor best known for portraying corrupt patriarchs is here the champion of reason and fairness. The widescreen presentation is speckless and looks fabulous, and at times the atmosphere is so darkly febrile that you can almost sense Psycho lurking just around the corner. Which, indeed, it was.

Nick Riddle on 19th August 2010
View all 48 of Nick Riddle's reviews

Film Information

Director - Richard Fleischer

Produced - 1959

Main Language - English

Countries & Regions - American film

Cast - Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, Edward Binns, E. G. Marshall, Richard Anderson

DVD Details

Certificate:	12	Publisher:	Second Sight	Region:	2
Length:	99 mins	Aspect:	2.35:1 widescreen	Cat No:	2NDVD3183
Format:	DVD B&W

Film Description

Compulsion is a stylish thriller that sees two callous law students murder a young boy in cold blood to 'prove' their intellectual superiority.

Having been raised by wealthy, snobbish families, Artie Straus has grown up as a sadistic bully and Judd Steiner as a timid introvert. The two college friends concoct the 'perfect crime' - the murder of a young boy, but their arrogance and conceit leads to their arrest. The inimitable Orson Welles plays the criminal defense lawyer (a character based on the famous Clarence Darrow) who takes on their almost impossible case.

This outstanding courtroom drama is based on the notorious 1924 murder trial of killers Leopold and Loeb. It was nominated for a BAFTA and garnered the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award for Stockwell, Dillman and Welles as well as a nomination for the Palme d'Or.