Hitchcock was an enthusiastic theatregoer and was on familiar ground with his adap­tion of the novel and play Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson. As scenario writer, Alma Reville would have helped to craft the efficient visualising of the film peppered throughout with the the­atre aesthetic from proscenium framing to witty use of the ‘wings’ as sites of action. A particularly effective scene withdraws from the ostensible site of the narrative in which the falsely accused woman is pro­nounced guilty in the courtroom, prefer­ring to ‘overhear’ the sentencing from the now deserted jury room where a cleaner is sweeping up. This pulling back from the action to get a slightly off beat perspective was a favourite Hitchcock device – think of the withdrawal to a long shot in the phone booth scene in The Birds for example or the sudden reduction in sound level used in Blackmail, North by Northwest and Topaz which has a similarly disorienting effect. Hitchcock was not a fan of the whodunit form which he considered insuf­ficiently suspenseful although he returned to it a few times notably with Stage Fright (adapted by Alma). Nevertheless Murder! is made with great care and inventiveness – the use of a voice over to express Sir John’s (Herbert Marshall) interior thought whilst staring at his face in the mirror while shaving was a novel development in the early days of sound. The set piece in which Sir John confronts Handel Fane hoping to entrap him into a confession uses another theatrical device, the play-within-a-play à la Hamlet.