ICY BLONDE WOMAN [weighted down with diamonds]: I'm awfully nervous, John

A PSYCHIATRIST: You're absolutely crazy, Madeline. The specific nature of your madness has long been of interest to men of science. Allow me to deliver a thirty-minute lecture directly to the camera in front of the blackboard on the subject. [He does so.]

Superficially, Dial M for Murder (1954) looks unambitious, a simple stage-to-set recreation of Frederick Knott’s hit play. Even Hitchcock, perhaps disingenuously, described it as a phoned-in effort knocked off between the location shooting of I, Confess and the elaborate staging of Rear Window. But the tightly-staged thriller bristles with symbols of objectification and possession, reducing Margot Wendice to a property passed from hand to hand, from man to man, as readily as the key around…

Previously: How to tell if you are in a Haruki Murakami novel.  1. You are on a train, but no one can find you. You are leaning out of your car window making cryptic statements about love to a man you have only just met. Your silhouette is impossible. 2. You are doing something you do not want to, for reasons you cannot explain, with someone you are obsessed with for no earthly reason.