Compulsion

Both the novel by Meyer Levin and the movie came out at the time that Nathan Leopold was granted parole after serving over 30 years of a life sentence for killing Bobby Franks. The film itself is a B picture with an out of place, fiftyish jazz score that is distracting. Other than some antique vehicles and kids dancing the Charleston, the film does little to capture the atmosphere of the 1920s when the Loeb-Leopold case took place. The acting by the cast is competent. What lifts Compulsion from the ranks of the ordinary is Orson Welles. Compulsion is arguably the finest work he ever did outside the films he directed himself, maybe The Third Man is the only competition. Welles's speech to the jury is absolutely mesmerizing, how he didn't get into the Oscar sweepstakes is a mystery for the ages. Welles's Jonathan Wilks captures the real Clarence Darrow far more than Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind. For you Orson Welles fans this is a must.

If "Compulsion" is still such a powerful film is, totally, Dean Stockwell's merit. What a sensational actor! I'm writing this the day after the announcement of Dennis Hopper's death and while I was looking for a Dennis Hopper movie to watch a came across "Compulsion" Not Hopper but Stockwell and I settled for that anyway. I was riveted by Stockwell's performance because everyone else (with the natural exception of Orson Wells and E G Marshall) seems so dated and acted that Dean's every moment is sheer magic. He doesn't shy away from the awfulness but makes his young monster totally human, provoking in us that element that Orson Welles's closing argument tries to bring to the forefront. If you love great acting, you can't afford to miss Dean Stockwell in "Compulsion"

The real-life Leopold-Loeb murder case, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope," among other films, is the basis for this story of a couple of rich young men committing a murder just for the thrill of trying to pull off the perfect crime. Stockwell and Dillman are well cast as the cold-blooded killers. The first half of the film, focusing on the strange relationship between the two men, their crime, and their arrest, is quite interesting. Then Welles shows up as the defense attorney and the film loses momentum. Welles seems to be sleep-walking through this one, and his final speech seems to take up about a third of the film.