Summary
Mr. Cadell comes in and greets the two men, saying that he wanted to get his cigarette case before the two head up to the farm. He apologizes to Phillip for startling him earlier, but Brandon says the apology is unnecessary, and that Phillip has been somewhat antisocial all evening. “Any idea where you left the case?” Brandon asks him. Mr. Cadell tells him he has no idea, as we see him take the cigarette case out of his inner jacket pocket and place it on the table, out of sight of the two men; clearly, the missing case was just an excuse to come back up to the apartment. He says that his leaving the case was likely not a mistake, as indeed Freud would suggest that he left it because he subconsciously wanted to come back. “Why should I want to come back?” Cadell asks, and Phillip echoes his question aggressively. Brandon, on the other hand, offers Cadell a drink.
Brandon tells Phillip to make Cadell a drink, as Cadell pretends to wonder where his cigarette case might be. He looks over at the chest, pretending that it was there that he last saw the case, and retrieves it, performing relief. “May I have that drink anyway?” he asks Brandon, who tells him that he absolutely can. Phillip becomes angry, yelling at Mr. Cadell, but Brandon assures him that Phillip has just been overserved. Cadell sits with his drink and crosses his legs, as the two men stand around him. He urges them to pack and do what they need to do for their trip up to Connecticut, but Brandon insists that they’ve already packed. Cadell says that he won’t keep them long, just until he’s finished his drink, and Brandon looks at Phillip anxiously. “I would like to stay a bit,” Cadell says, “perhaps even see you off.”
As Cadell takes out a cigarette, he admits that it’s hard to leave a party, especially when the evening has been particularly stimulating or strange, as indeed this evening has been. When Phillip asks him what made the evening strange, Brandon insists that Cadell often chooses words for their sound rather than their meaning. “I don’t exactly know what I meant, unless I was thinking about David,” Cadell says, and Phillip looks shocked. Cadell goes on, expressing his concern about David’s whereabouts, and asking if either of the men suspect anything actually happened to him. Cadell brainstorms what might have happened to David, but Brandon insists that none of those things—a hold up, getting run over—could have happened in broad daylight. “Yes, it must’ve been in broad daylight when it happened,” Cadell says. “When what happened?” Brandon asks, as the camera zooms in on Brandon’s hand slipping into his pocket.
Cadell stands, anxious about the threat of violence, and continues to wonder what could have happened to David. “What’s your theory?” Brandon asks him, to which Cadell responds that he agrees with Janet, who believes that the two men kidnapped David, or did something to prevent him from coming. “I’m not interested in Janet’s prattle, but you always interest me, Rupert. Do you think I kidnapped David?” Brandon asks, snickering. Cadell responds that it sounds like something that Brandon would have done for fun in school, just for the excitement of it. “How would you get David out of the way?” Brandon asks Cadell. Cadell hesitates, before saying, “If I wanted to get rid of David, I’d invite him for a drink, at the club or at some quiet bar. Or better yet, I’d invite him here. That way no one would see us together.” Brandon seems delighted and invites Cadell to elaborate.
Cadell details how he would kill David. He says that he would greet David amiably in the hall, take his hat, then bring him in the living room, make smalltalk, give him a drink, invite him to sit down, make it pleasant, perhaps by having Phillip play the piano. As Cadell narrates his hypothetical murder scene, the camera pans and follows his narration, from the hall, to the drinks table, to the chair, to the piano. Cadell then says that he would have to knock David out, because David is very strong. “Then where would you put him?” Brandon asks, as the camera pans towards the chest and Brandon’s hand in his pocket, touching the gun. Cadell says that he would then take David’s body down to the car. Brandon insists that if Cadell took the body down to the car in broad daylight, they would undoubtedly get caught. Cadell then agrees that they would have to find a place to store the body, and Brandon looks at him expectantly. Cadell wanders towards the chest, but does not say anything about it.
Suddenly, Phillip becomes angry, throwing a bottle on the floor and lamenting the fact that they are playing a game of “cat and mouse” in which no one can tell “which is the cat and which is the mouse.” Brandon scolds him, and Phillip pours himself another drink. Brandon then directly questions Cadell as to why he has returned to the apartment. “Oh you’re as romantic as Janet. I don’t think for a moment that you kidnapped David!” Cadell says, dismissively, before adding, “Oh I will admit that Janet put the notion in my head, but I never would have mentioned it if it weren’t that you seemed to be carrying fear of discovery in your pocket.” Brandon looks confused, as Cadell motions to the gun that he’s holding in his pocket. Brandon begins to laugh heartily, taking the gun out of his pocket and trying to cover up the fact that he’s carrying it with laughter. He goes on to give the explanation that there have been a number of burglaries in the country, and he was bringing it for protection, as he places the gun on the table.
The camera zooms in on Cadell’s face, which remains suspicious, as Brandon walks over to Phillip and laughs about Cadell’s suspicion. “It’s hot how one can pyramid simple facts into wild fantasies, isn’t it?” Cadell says, walking towards the window and examining something on the couch. Brandon asks him how he’s doing with his drink, but Cadell cryptically says he ought to be going. The camera pans over to Cadell’s pocket, out of which he pulls the rope that was used to kill David and tie together Mr. Kentley’s books. Cadell holds the rope out of sight from the two men, hinting that he knows that their drive to Connecticut will be exciting. As he turns around, he reveals that he is holding the rope. The camera pans from his hands holding the rope to Phillip and Brandon looking at him.
Phillip becomes exceedingly anxious, realizing that Cadell knows, and grabs the gun from the table. “I’d just as soon kill you as kill him,” Phillip says, pointing the gun at Brandon. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Somebody else to know. Somebody else to see how brilliant you are, just like in school,” Phillip says, his voice quivering. As Phillip continues ranting at Brandon, Cadell runs towards him and struggles to gain control of the gun. The camera zooms in on their hands as they struggle over the gun. The gun goes off, but just gets fired at the floor, as Phillip falls into a nearby chair, and Cadell takes the gun. Brandon still has a number of excuses and tries to tell Cadell that Phillip has become an alcoholic, but Cadell won’t hear it and tells Brandon to stop.
Cadell tells Brandon that he’s going to look inside the chest. “Are you crazy?” Brandon asks, to which Cadell responds, “I hope with all my heart I’m crazy.” Brandon tries to argue with Cadell, but eventually agrees to let him look inside the chest. “I hope you like what you see!” he tells him. Cadell opens the chest abruptly, and an expression of horror stretches across his face as he encounters David’s body. “I couldn’t believe it was true,” he whispers to himself, horrified. Brandon approaches him, and tells him that he will understand, alluding to their earlier discussion of superior men being entitled to kill inferior men. Cadell is horrified as Brandon says, “That’s all Phillip and I have done. He and I have lived, while you and I talked.”
Cadell goes to the desk and picks up the gun. While he takes responsibility for having held such beliefs philosophically, he is disappointed that Brandon has twisted his words into a justification for an ugly murder. Growing more upset, Cadell rises and tells Brandon that he is disgusted by his behavior, that he himself would never be capable of such a violent act. “Now I know that we are each of us a separate human being, with the right to work and think as individuals…By what right do you dare say that there’s a superior few to which you belong?” Cadell says, circling Brandon. “Did you think you were God, Brandon?” he yells at Brandon, growing angrier and angrier. Livid, Cadell assures Brandon and Phillip that they will be punished for their act, going so far as to tell them that they are “going to die.”
Abruptly, Cadell goes to the window and fires three shots to signal that something is amiss in the apartment. We hear people chattering about the gunshots outside, as Cadell comes back into the apartment. Sirens begin to blare outside, and Cadell sits beside the chest, still holding the gun and waiting for the police to arrive. Brandon pours himself a drink and Phillip begins to play the piano.
Analysis
This section is a standoff, a triangle of tension between Cadell, Phillip, and Brandon. At first, the tension between the three men is held in check by social etiquette, as Cadell apologizes for barging back in on them and interrupting them. They have a civil discussion about where the cigarette case might be, and Cadell asks if he might have a drink. Rather than come right out with what he suspects of the men, he speaks in suggestions and maintains a social manner that follows standard conventions. Brandon is also able to maintain his composure. Phillip alone is overtaken by the tension of the moment, yelling unceremoniously at Mr. Cadell, anxious for Mr. Cadell to just come out and tell them what he suspects. The conundrum is engaging and tense, building suspense at a gradual pace.
Cadell plays an unusual mind game with the two murderers. He is determined not to just come out and say what he believes, but rather to wait until the men betray themselves and reveal their horrible crime. He dances around the subject of his return, hinting at his suspicions without ever saying what they are. When he learns that he is the only thing standing in the way of the men traveling to Connecticut that evening, he says that he must be going, before slyly waiting a few seconds and adding, “after I’ve finished my drink.” He does not want to risk too much in revealing what he knows, but Cadell is determined to learn the truth, and he will do it subtly and slowly, in exactly the amount of time it will take him to finish a drink. What follows is a strange conversation, in which Cadell details how he would hypothetically murder David. While the men all pretend to be speaking hypothetically, they all know that they know the truth, but no one is willing to address it as such.
Indeed, this section of the film becomes more of a traditional whodunit crime movie, even if the viewer knows very well who did it, and even if the outcome seems more ambiguous. While the beginning of the film aligns the viewer with the murderers and their plight, in this final section, the viewer also becomes aligned with Cadell, who seeks to apprehend his young corrupted proteges and discover the nature of David’s disappearance. His oblique tactics and all of the charged subtext bubbling beneath the surface of the encounter calls to mind film noir, in which the hardboiled detective must keep his cool, conform to social demands, all the while psychologically disarming his opponent. Cadell, the man who has inspired the violence and confidence of the young men in the first place with his investment in Nietzsche’s “superman” must now play the detective.
Indeed, the fact that it was Cadell himself who initially planted the seeds and encouraged an interest in murder in his impressionable pupils Brandon and Phillip, makes the whole situation all the more complicated. Where he can enjoy a hypothetical and intellectual discussion about the philosophical dimensions of murder, he is not the murdering type. Cadell’s ability to abstract distinguishes him from Brandon, whose affinity with the philosophical concept of the perfect murder drives him to actually commit it. This only makes the final showdown all the more tense, as Brandon asks Mr. Cadell to tell them how he would kill David if he were to do so. Mr. Cadell is in some ways responsible for having cultivated the murderous tendencies in his young former pupils. Now, it is his task to catch them in the act, to take them to task for the very murderous concept in which he himself professes to believe. This is made most explicit when Brandon makes Cadell narrate how he would kill David. Through the relationship between Cadell and the boys, we see a pathological lineage, an affinity for murder that has been passed down.
The camera is truly an extra character in the film, as it seems to have a mind all its own. It follows different narrative threads and reveals different elements of the plot at different times, showing the viewer various perspectives and aligning the viewer with various characters. It glides around the room with an ease and a swiftness, sometimes showing close-ups of objects or movements in favor of showing the expressions on characters’ faces. When Cadell reveals that he is holding the rope, we cannot see his face as he reveals it, only his hands. The camera’s unpredictable movement as well as its confinement within the apartment lends the entire movie a greater degree of suspense and claustrophobia. The wandering perspective of the camera, as well as the innovation of making the entire film seem like one long shot, is at once stagey and powerful. One feels as though one is watching a play from onstage, wandering around and looking at various parts of the room sometimes completely unconnected to the character speaking. Hitchcock’s methods make for a terrifying, uncomfortable, and immersive cinematic experience.
