Compulsion (1959)

Director:

Richard Fleischer

Writers:

Richard Murphy (screenplay)
Meyer Levin (novel)

Release Date:

May 1959 (West Germany)

Genre:

Biography | Crime | Drama | History | Thriller

Tagline:

Sometimes murder is just a way to pass the time.

Plot:

Two wealthy law-school students go on trial for murder in this version of the Leopold-Loeb case.

Plot Keywords:

Student | Trial | Murder | Defense Attorney | College Student

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 1 win & 4 nominations

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Orson Welles	...	Jonathan Wilk
Diane Varsi	...	Ruth Evans
Dean Stockwell	...	Judd Steiner
Bradford Dillman	...	Arthur A. Straus
E.G. Marshall	...	District Attorney Harold Horn
Martin Milner	...	Sid Brooks
Richard Anderson	...	Max Steiner
Robert F. Simon	...	Police Lt. Johnson (as Robert Simon)
Edward Binns	...	Tom Daly
Robert Burton	...	Charles Straus
Wilton Graff	...	Mr. Steiner
Louise Lorimer	...	Mrs. Straus aka 'Mumsy'
Gavin MacLeod	...	Padua - Horn's Assistant
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ina Balin	...	Mike's girlfriend (scenes deleted)
Edmund Cobb	...	Policeman (scenes deleted)
Frank Conroy	...	(scenes deleted)

Also Known As:

Der Zwang zum Bösen (Austria) (West Germany) [de]
Brottslig drift (Sweden) [sv]
De amoralske (Denmark) [da]
Estranha Compulsão (Brazil) [pt]
Estranha Obsessão (Brazil) [pt]
Frenesia del delitto (Italy) [it]
Impulso criminal (Spain) [es]
Le génie du mal (France) [fr]
O Génio do Mal (Portugal) (original subtitled version) [pt]
Rikollinen vietti (Finland) [fi]
Syntrofoi tou kakou (Greece) [el]

Runtime:

103 min | 99 min (FMC Library Print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) (Westrex Recording System) | Mono (35 mm optical prints) (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (certificate #19194) | Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles High School - 4650 W. Olympia Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Darryl F. Zanuck Productions

Trivia:

The original play included what was then a modern-day sequence. This was omitted from the film. It showed several of the characters thirty years after the story took place.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Judd Steiner: To the perfect crime!
Arthur Straus: Crime. Oh, my wealthy fraternity brothers. 67 dollars, and a second-hand typewriter.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Apartment Zero (1988)

Orson Welles, We Did You Wrong

We can add Welles to Wilde, Monroe and others who we never respected until they were gone. His pleading for the lives of those crazy boys (as Clarence Darrow did) is an eloquent plea for the ending of the death penalty. Funny, how a barometer like the death penalty tells us so much about a society's relative civility. The US had backed away from it, but is now swinging back toward even public executions (which I would much prefer, as they show all of us how barbaric we have become).

Note that the movie dwells on their 'craziness' and 'richness', not the Jewishness or the homosexual relationships that evoked the wrath of the public in the real case. Both Dillman and Dean Stockwell do an excellent job of drawing out your anger until you find yourself one of the mob yelling for blood. To stem the tide, in comes Orson Welles. Welles' phrasing and meaningful looks struck me again with what a magnificent actor he was, as well as director.

Now I have to go read 'Compulsion', the novel around which this movie was made, to determine what was left out and if it would have contributed to some of the obviously omitted details that make this movie a little choppy. This movie performs the task that great art must take on itself: to provide us insights into life and how it should be lived. That can be done either negatively or positively, by point or counter-point.

Of course, unless you had some excellent writers and actors of the stature of Welles, you wouldn't come up to the quality of this movie. Definitely, black and white contributed to the brooding quality of the film. Color would have detracted, and you'll seldom 'hear' me say this.