Compulsion, 1959

Ingenious retelling of the 1924 Leopold & Loeb "crime of the century" is arguably better than Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 version "Rope" and unquestionably more historically accurate. Rope did a slightly better job getting into the heads of the two psychopathic college students whose superiority complexes compelled them to kill a 14-year-old boy just for the heck of it, but Compulsion succeeds thanks to a good script and strong performances, particularly from Stockwell, Marshall, and Welles, who only appears in the last half hour but makes the most of his limited screen time. Some reviewers have chastised this film for the long-winded anti-capital punishment speech that Welles (i.e. Clarence Darrow) delivers during the climax to defend the two loathsome young men whom some would argue deserved a harsher punishment than life in prison, but to me this is precisely what makes the film a triumph. Director Richard Fleischer spends the majority of the film convincing the audience, myself included, to side with the townspeople in their belief that these cold-blooded brats deserved to hang for their crime, so the fact that by the end I found myself sympathizing with the judge's decision is a true testament to the power of Darrow's speech, which was in fact delivered at the actual trial. Had the film ended any other way, not only would it have re-written history, but it would've rendered the story pointless. My only complaint about the film is Diane Varsi's character, not just because Varsi gives a weak performance, but because her character's irrational insistence that one of the killers is simply a confused and misunderstood young man never rang true and served no real purpose to the story.

What did you think about this review?

Thank you for voting.

Like Dislike

Abuse report sent

Report abuse