Sometimes Murder Is Just A Way To Pass The Time

Compulsion (1959) – Two highly intelligent but emotionally immature young men look to create the perfect crime. When they murder a young boy, the police follow the trail back to them. Can a brilliant but controversial attorney save their lives?

Directed by Richard Fleischer

Starring Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Diane Varsi, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Martin Milner

Why I Liked It – Chillingly brilliant performances from Stockwell, Dillman, and Welles.

You don’t need to know the story of the Leopold-Loeb trial, but it gives the background on this movie. In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb planned and committed the murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Labeled the “crime of the century”. High-profile attorney Clarence Darrow defended them. All the major details of this case (including the stunning final summation) are included in the movie.

For its day, “Compulsion” is pretty edgy. One of the long-standing questions about the original story is the relationship between the two men. There is a clear sexual tension in the original story, and it’s clear here as well. They had to skirt the boundaries of the Motion Picture Production Code, which forbade any direct discussion of homosexuality. The movie does not try to make the characters comfortable or relatable by the audience. There is never a moment when I felt sorry for them. Like their real-life models, both young men are terrifying in their sociopathy.

Which brings us to the performances that put all of that on the screen. Later in his career, Stockwell became a veteran character actor. He was funny, relatable and very much an “everyman”. For those of us who know him from that portion of his career, performances like this are stunning. He is chilling. Matching him chill for chill is Bradford Dillman, also better known to many viewers for his long career as co-star/character actor. Add in Orson Welles in the Darrow role (I will confess, I didn’t realize it was him for almost 15 minutes), and there is some SERIOUS acting on display. Enough that the Cannes Film Festival gave a special three-way acting award to the trio in 1960. The rest of the cast is fine as well, but they are strictly background for the central three. I’ll only take exception to one character, Diane Varsi’s Ruth Evans, who is desperate to see the good in Stockwell’s character. It’s an annoying cliché, but that’s the script’s fault, not hers. E.G. Marshall was born to play straight-shooting District Attorneys, Martin Milner (best known for ‘60s TV cop show “Adam-12”) is perfect a Ruth’s straight arrow boyfriend. Then add in more veteran character actors like Richard Anderson, Robert F. Simon, and Edward Binns, and you have everything you need to knock this out of the park.

There’s one largish flaw here, however. In the original trial, Darrow’s closing argument ran for eight hours (!). It’s nowhere near that long, but the closing speech is very long. It stops the movie dead, sadly. It’s brilliant, but destroys all the momentum of the movie.

At the same time, it remains great actors doing what they do best!

You can stream “Compulsion” on Amazon Prime, Sling, Hulu, YouTube TV, YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV, and Fandango.

Rating – *** Worth A Look