Google Ads
Login | Sign Up

Compulsion Overview:

Compulsion (1959) was a Crime - Drama Film directed by Richard Fleischer and produced by Richard D. Zanuck.

SYNOPSIS

A tough dramatization of the famous Leopold and Loeb murder case in which two college students kidnapped and killed a boy purely for kicks. Welles plays the defense attorney who knows the truth and hopes only to forestall the death sentence. An adaptation of reporter Meyer Levin's novel.

(Source: available at Amazon AMC Classic Movie Companion)

Compulsion BlogHub Articles:

Orson Welles: Mr. Arkadin (1955) and Compulsion (1959)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 28, 2023 From 4 Star Films

Mr. Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report) has the abundance of canted angles and striking visual flourishes one usually attributes to the films of Orson Welles. It also boasts his ever more disorienting sense of space and shot-reverse-shot even as the international cast, financing, and locales... Read full article

The Leopold and Loeb case is the basis for “Compulsion”

By Stephen Reginald on Mar 5, 2021 From Classic Movie Man

The Leopold and Loeb case is the basis for “Compulsion” Compulsion (1959) is an American crime drama directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Orson Welles, Diane Varsi, Dean Stockwell, and Brandford Dillman. The film is based on a novel written by Meyer Levin, which was a fiction... Read full article

See More Compulsion Articles

Quotes from Compulsion:

Judd Steiner: Please, Artie - I'll do anything you say.
Arthur Straus: Anything?
[last lines]
Jonathan Wilk: In those years to come, you might find yourself asking if it wasn't the hand of god dropped these glasses... And if he didn't, who did?
Judd Steiner: Not tomorrow afternoon.
Arthur Straus: Oh, you got another date?
[in disbelief]
Arthur Straus: Are you ditching me for some girl?
Judd Steiner: I haven't been able to find you for three days.
Jonathan Wilk: If there is any way of destroying hatred and all that goes with it, it's not through evil and hatred and cruelty, but through charity, love, understanding.
Arthur Straus: The neighborhood is swarming with kidnappers and degenerates!
See More Quotes from Compulsion
Facts from Compulsion
In later years, Richard Fleischer would make two more films about real life notorious murders - The Boston Strangler and 10 Rillington Place.
Although top-billed, Orson Welles doesn't appear in the film until one hour and five minutes have passed.
This is the second of three Hollywood adaptations of the Leopold-Loeb murder. The first was Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, the third Tom Kalin's Swoon.
Because Orson Welles was having tax problems during the production, at the end of shooting his salary for the movie was garnisheed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. This upset Welles so much that just before he finished looping his dialogue in post-production, he stormed off the studio and left the country. All that was left to be looped was the last 20 seconds of his end speech in the courtroom. Incredibly, editor William Reynolds fixed this problem without needing Welles. Reynolds took words and pieces of words Welles had spoken earlier in the movie, and pieced them one by one into those 20 seconds.
Average Shot Length & Median Shot Length = ~11 seconds.
See More Facts about Compulsion >>