A Blueprint for Murder (1953)

Wonderful Movie

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Film noir is an individual taste, and while the genre is certainly one of the most famous of classic movies today, there are so few that can be called "all-time classics". Certainly, when you say "Film Noir", you may think instantly of "Laura", "Double Indemnity", "Gilda", "The Big Sleep", among a few others. But then, there are the "sleepers", low-budget delights like "Detour" and "Decoy", cult classics like "Somewhere in the Night" and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes", and later day film noir entries like "Cape Fear" and "The Manchurian Candidate". Some might rank the more obscure entries in this genre as just average, but there are hidden delights out there just yearning to be re-discovered."A Blueprint For Murder" took me totally by surprise, and I was not expecting the twists and turns of this exciting melodrama. It all starts with an unseen little girl screaming in ailment, supposedly due to viral encephalitis, but suspicions lead to more being revealed than meets the eye. The poor little girl's uncle (Joseph Cotten) arrives and exchanges pleasantries with Jean Peters, the girl's stepmother and widow of his late brother. They are seemingly very close, but certain factors begin to make him suspicious of her. His close friend (Gary Merrill) and Merrill's mystery obsessed wife (Catherine McLeod) give him the hints that something else could be up. Could the seemingly sweet Peters be a strictnine poisoning murderess? After the poor girl dies, Cotten keeps putting off leaving town on business, afraid that his nephew (Freddy Ridgeway) might become Peters' next victim. But there's no evidence to prove that Peters isn't anything more than a loving woman, and it is up to Cotten to go out of his way (here very desperately) to prove himself either right or wrong.All the twists and turns are there for a desperate measure to reveal the truth, and it all culminates on a European bound steamship where Cotten himself might be revealed to be a killer. This is another chase between cat and mouse where the stakes are obvious. As Peters points out after her possible motives are exposed, Cotten has possible motive too. So the viewer begins to question what seems obvious as possibly being not so, and who seems to be good as being not so. The fact that romance slowly erupts between Cotten and Peters makes them a couple straight out of memories of MacMurray and Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity" and Mitchum and Greer in "Out of the Past". This one has a twist towards the end that left me with a dropped jaw and clutching my hands, both in tension and delight, as to the twists and turns of this film noir roller-coaster.

Unusual movie since it's hard to adequately comment without giving away the ending. It's an efficient little suspenser, but nothing more. And that's too bad because the premise has more exciting possibilities than what's there on screen. The problem lies, I think, with the way the project was conceived as nothing more than a low-budget, 70-minute, quickie. It looks like the producers went out and hired a director then making his reputation on just such uncomplicated movie fare, Andrew Stone. He's perfect for the concept with his straight-ahead, documentary style that cares little for artifice or character. The script too plows straight- ahead with little subtlety or ambiguity. Thus a potential that would add the vital extra dimension of mystery or whodunit is eliminated from the outset, resulting in a straight suspense film with no surprises.Now I was slow to catch on. I kept looking for twists or some kind of ambiguity that would open up a mysterious aspect and leave me guessing. But there isn't any. The streamlined screenplay is utterly without artifice, which may have suited Stone, but left me with an ending that's not only badly contrived but also with the feeling that this can't be all there is. It's like taking a sight-seeing trip that keeps you watching, but ends up without any memorable sights to see.Too bad that fine actor Joseph Cotten is wasted in a role that could have gone to dozens of less talented male leads. There is so much room for ambiguity that would have engaged his talent, instead of turning him into a basically one-dimensional bloodhound. I sympathize with those posters who regret that the master of suspense and subtlety, Alfred Hitchcock, didn't get hold of the material first. Jean Peters is fine, and I can see why the notorious womanizer Howard Hughes slapped a ring on her finger if only for a little while. But that final scene of waiting her out is so utterly implausible. After all, what does she gain by risking agonizing death since she's trapped on board ship where a trip to ship's doctor can be easily verified. Once she drinks the cocktail, her fate is sealed, and it's foolish of the screenplay to pretend otherwise.In passing—note how at ease director Stone is with the cop scenes. I detect a Dragnet influence from the TV series, even down to series veterans Phillips and Kruschen. Put that sort of material, such as The Night Holds Terror (1954), in Stone's hands and his single- minded devotion to procedure and plot works really well. Where it doesn't work so well is reducing potentially complex material like Blueprint to routine docu-drama.

Interesting film soon falls flat. Joseph Cotten, a reserved heavy smoking businessman, shows up just in time when his young niece dies suddenly in the hospital. Joe's brother and sister-in-law are already gone, and before his death, the brother had remarried the lovely Jean Peters. A young nephew survives.What seems to be a routine tragedy soon develops into murder by poisoning. When it becomes obvious that Peters has killed her step-daughter, Cotten and others must prove it and at the same time protect the young nephew from the conniving killer.The film falls flat once Cotten follows Peters and the young nephew on to a boat where she is taking the young lad to see Europe and probably come to his death.Cotten's scheme is to kill his sister-in-law before she kills the little boy. Far-fetched but not out of the realm of a world gone crazy is the plot to this film. The entire problem here is that it's almost impossible for anyone to pin the murder on Peters.It appears that after supposedly poisoning Miss Peters at the end, Cotten seems to have gone awry. The poison doesn't seem to be working proving that those aspirins with the w on them weren't poison after all. ...But were they?

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!