The Stage is Set

My grouse with plays has always been that they are in 'long shot'. I crave for the quality of omnipresence that a film camera bestows on the audience by shifting from long to mid to close to extreme close, and so on. It, somehow, lends a feeling of intimacy with the characters for me, the viewer. Not to mention that size of the frame also acts as a punctuation. 

But at the same time, I have found myself fascinated with films that resemble plays—in the sense of their setting. The single set of 'Rope' to 'Sleuth' and 'Deathtrap', resembling the 'stage' in more ways than one has kept me rooted to my seat every time. The other commonality among these three aforementioned films is that they all deal with crime—murder, to be precise.

Like any other fans of murder mysteries, I, too, have been an avid reader of Christie, Doyle and the masters. A common trope in these murder mysteries—from Christie, to our own Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories is the climax, where there is this room full of individuals connected to the 'case', and one of them, is about to be revealed as the culprit.

In David Greene's made for TV film of 1982, 'Rehearsal for Murder', we are plunged headlong into this scenario very, very early into the film. A playwright (Robert Preston) named Alex Dennison, who lost his fiancee, Monica Wells (Lynn Redgrave, sister of the legendary Vanessa Redgrave) a year ago, has assembled a group of individuals for a reading of this new play that he is working on. 

Behind this apparently innocuous invitation lies an ulterior motive—that of unmasking the truth behind his fiancee's death. Alex firmly believes that Monica was murdered, as opposed to what the police believe that she committed suicide after her first leading role generated a 'mixed response'. Not only that, Alex is also sure that one out of those who he has invited for the reading is the murderer!

A murder mystery is very much like an act of prestidigitation. In both cases, the audience/reader allows the author/illusionist to indulge in an act of misdirection and happily follows, knowing in the end they will realize that they were betrayed, in the sense that the truth (identity of the culprit/how the magic is done) was always being kept hidden.

But there is a sense of enjoyment in this betrayal (though there are some novelists and films where the identity of the criminal is unraveled right at the beginning. Those are the 'whydunits' and 'howdunits', and not the 'whodunits'). That is because we are all aware that we are being led down the garden path, so to speak. What makes the journey worthwhile is the expected surprise at the end.

What makes films like the three aforementioned ones and even the less somber examples like 'Clue' and 'Murder by Death' a treat is that we are all kept guessing till the very end, and the fact that, invariably, the writer throws us red herrings along the way. 

A similar premise of eliciting a confession about a crime is not an original idea. 'Chase a Crooked Shadow' had a similar plot. But while that film depended on logically questionable and at times quite incredulous artifices, 'Rehearsal for Murder' has taken a totally different path.

In the first scene of the film, one of the minor characters says '...that's where it all starts—words'. In 'Rehearsal for Murder', words is to Alex what 'the little gray cells' is to Poirot. After all, when a playwright plays sleuth, his magnifying glass will inevitably be words. 

On stage is the microcosm of the theater world. Besides the playwright, there is a heroine (Karen, played by Madolyn Smith), a director (Lloyd, portrayed by Lawrence Pressman), a producer (Walter, enacted by William Daniels), a leading man (David, played by Patrick Macnee) and a struggling actor (Leo, a lanky Jeff Goldblum). What is missing is the critic. 

But as Alex says in the film, 'Never confuse the audience with the critics'. The play within the film is not being staged for the critics, of course. Here the actors are the audience.

In every murder mystery the detective is always the same. It is the author, because from the very beginning s/he knows   who has committed the crime. 'Rehearsal for Murder' brings this truism to the fore. 

And that very last shot, where Alex raises a toast is actually the audience clinking the glass, appreciating an aspect that seems to have been overshadowed by the over-dependence on CGI today—the role of the writer. 

It is also a reminder for those of us who missed what Greene told us at least twice during the film—once in Monica's bedroom, and then in the 'third act' of the film—via a poster of 'La Revue Blanche', the late 19th century periodical that is synonymous with the modern 'literary' movement.