A Blueprint for Murder

In Andrew L. Stone’s A Blueprint for Murder, murder within the monied class is far subtler, quieter, and less violent than murder among the thugs and underworld we find in the rest of film noir. Stone’s careful direction and Joseph Cotten’s restrained performance create an almost clinical atmosphere in which a little girl’s poisoning in her hospital bed sets up a cat and mouse game in which the girl’s uncle Cam (Cotten) begins to suspect her stepmother Lynn (Jean Peters, who had her breakout role this same year in Pickup on South Street). It seems Lynn will inherit a fortune if both Polly and her surviving brother Doug (Fred Ridgeway) exit the earth while still minors, a fact that sets off Cam’s investigation flanked by his lawyer friend Fred Sargent (Michael Rennie) and the NYPD, who find it impossible to pin the death on Lynn. The film has a semi-documentary feel with Cotten’s increasingly anxious voiceover and a police procedural as act two. The final sequence is uniquely methodical and wrings maximum suspense out of a final confrontation on a cruise ship (even if the climactic reveal happens off-screen).