Compulsion (1959 film)

{{Short description|1959 film directed by Richard Fleischer}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2026}} {{Infobox film | image = Compulsion-Poster.jpg | alt = | caption = Theatrical release poster | director = [[Richard Fleischer]] | producer = [[Richard D. Zanuck]] | screenplay = [[Richard Murphy (screenwriter)|Richard Murphy]] | based_on = {{based on|''[[Compulsion (Levin novel)|Compulsion]]'' 1956 novel|[[Meyer Levin]]}} | starring = [[Orson Welles]] [[Diane Varsi]] [[Dean Stockwell]] [[Bradford Dillman]] [[E. G. Marshall]] [[Martin Milner]] | music = [[Lionel Newman]] | cinematography = [[William C. Mellor]] | editing = [[William Reynolds (film editor)|William H. Reynolds]] | studio = [[Darryl F. Zanuck|Darryl F. Zanuck Productions]] | distributor = [[20th Century Studios|20th Century-Fox]] | released = {{Film date|1959|4|1}} | runtime = 103 minutes 99 minutes (FMC Library Print) | country = United States | language = English | budget = $1,345,000<ref>Solomon, Aubrey. ''Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series)''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. {{ISBN|978-0-8108-4244-1}}. p252</ref> | gross = $1.8 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)<ref>"1959: Probable Domestic Take", ''Variety'', 6 January 1960 p 34</ref> }}

'''''Compulsion''''' is a 1959 American [[crime film|crime]] [[Drama (film and television)|drama film]] directed by [[Richard Fleischer]], based on the [[Compulsion (Levin novel)|1956 novel of the same title]] by [[Meyer Levin]], which in turn is a thinly fictionalized account of the [[Leopold and Loeb]] murder trial. The film stars [[Dean Stockwell]] and [[Bradford Dillman]] as the perpetrators (called Judd Steiner and Artie Straus in the film), and [[Orson Welles]] as their defense attorney Jonathan Wilk (based on [[Clarence Darrow]]). [[Diane Varsi]], [[E. G. Marshall]], and [[Martin Milner]] play supporting roles.

The film was released by [[20th Century Studios|20th Century-Fox]] on April 1, 1959. It received positive reviews from critics, who singled out the lead performances. At the [[1959 Cannes Film Festival]], the film was nominated for the [[Palme d'Or]] and Welles, Stockwell, and Dillman collectively won the [[Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor|Best Actor Award]].

==Plot== Close friends Judd Steiner{{efn|Based on Nathan Leopold}} and Artie Straus{{efn|Based on Richard Loeb}} each believe they fit [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]'s philosophy of a "superman" (''[[Übermensch]]''), and thus are above the law. From wealthy, socially prominent families, both are graduate law students under age twenty at the [[University of Chicago Law School|University of Chicago]] (Artie tells investigators that he began undergraduate studies at the [[University of Michigan]] at age 14). Both believe themselves able to outsmart the "inferior" persons surrounding them.

Challenging Professor McKinnon's classroom lecture on "tribal codes," Judd asserts that Nietzsche claimed tribal leaders did not feel compelled to obey the laws they set: <blockquote> McKinnon (in disagreement): "Did [[Moses]] consider himself above the laws that he laid?"

Judd: "He had a motley crew on his hands, and he had to get them through the desert somehow." </blockquote> Sid Brooks, a classmate earning his way through college working at a newspaper, expresses wonder at Judd's interactions with the esteemed professor: <blockquote> Sid: "Every time I stick my neck out, he chops my head off. You get away with murder. How come?"

Judd: "I don't know, he just doesn't seem to think very fast."

Sid: "He's supposed to be one of the brightest men in the faculty."

Judd: "I suppose he is." </blockquote> [[File:Bradford Dillman 1966.JPG|thumb|upright=0.7| Bradford Dillman plays Artie Straus, the dominant of the two friends who believe they fit Nietzsche's philosophy of a "superman" (''Übermensch''), thus are above the law.]] [[File:Dean Stockwell (1965).jpg|thumb|upright=0.7| Dean Stockwell plays Judd Steiner, the submissive personality who goes along with Artie's increasingly criminal commands.]] [[File:Martin Milner 1960 publicity photo.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7| Martin Milner plays Sid Brooks, a classmate of Steiner and Straus's, a reporter who discovers the eyeglasses found near Paulie's body, assumed to be his, are too large to be Paulie's and are key evidence.]] [[File:Diane Varsi 1958.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7| Diane Varsi plays Ruth Evans, Sid Brooks's girlfriend who feels sympathy for Judd Steiner despite his having almost assaulted her.]] [[File:E G Marshall The Bold Ones 1970.JPG|thumb|upright=0.7| E.G. Marshall plays District Attorney Harold Horn, whose intensive interrogation of Steiner and Straus for hours results in their confessions.]] [[File:Orson Welles - The Long Hot Summer (1958) - cropped.JPG|thumb|upright=0.7| Orson Welles plays Jonathan Wilk, who saves Steiner and Straus from hanging by making an impassioned closing argument against capital punishment.]]

To please Artie, to whom Judd is [[submissive]], Judd goes along with Artie's increasingly criminal commands, such as stealing $67 and a typewriter from a campus fraternity house. When Artie commands Judd to run over a hitchhiking drunk they have run off the road with his car, Judd loses resolve and narrowly misses the drunk. Artie berates Judd for his lack of conviction, which proves he is not superior. To restore himself in Artie's regard, Judd proposes to demonstrate their "superior intellect" by killing a boy, demanding a [[ransom]], and outwitting the police. Cruising in their car for a victim, they lure Paulie Kessler, a neighbor on his way home from school, and kill him. Artie believes they have committed the "[[perfect crime]]." When police question Paulie's neighbors, a cocky Artie "helpfully" engages with the investigators, spitefully giving them false leads. Asked about suspicious characters around the neighborhood; among others, Artie suggests a teacher at Paulie's school, which Judd and he had attended four years previously, who always told the kids they were spoiled brats who had too much money.

When assigned a beat about a drowned boy that was found in the park, Sid discovers the eyeglasses found near Paulie's body, assumed to be his, are too large to be Paulie's and are key evidence. The glasses have a distinctive hinge, with only three pairs purchased in the [[Chicago]] area, Judd having purchased one pair. Judd, whose glasses dropped out of his pocket at the scene of the crime, is unable to produce his. Questioned, Judd claims he dropped them a few days earlier when bird-watching with his group of [[ornithology]] students. It now becomes urgent to dump the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house that they used to type the ransom note sent to the Kesslers.

Needing to give each other [[alibi]]s, Judd and Artie claim to have been out the evening of the murder with girls they picked up named May and Edna, whose full names they never learned. The alibi falls apart when the Steiner [[chauffeur]] unintentionally reveals he was working on repairs to Judd's car the entire evening that Judd and Artie claimed to be cruising in it with the girls (they had rented a car that could not be traced to them for the crime, but their alibi involved riding around in Judd's car). Eventually, the "superior" Artie cracks under interrogation and implicates Judd, who then confirms the details of Artie's confession, but insists that Artie committed the actual murder.

Famed attorney Jonathan Wilk{{efn|Based on [[Clarence Darrow]]}} takes their case, saving them from [[hanging]] by making an impassioned [[closing argument]] against [[capital punishment]]. Steiner and Straus are given life sentences, instead.<ref name="Leopold and Loeb still Fascinate">{{cite web|title=Leopold and Loeb Still Fascinate 90 Years Later|url=http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2012/10/leopold-and-loeb-still-fascinate-90-years-later-jake-hinkson-true-historical-film-adaptation-orson-welles-legal-wrangling-suffer-the-children?WT.mc_id=10144&et_cid=29706250&et_rid=497979563&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.criminalelement.com%2fblogs%2f2012%2f10%2fleopold-and-loeb-still-fascinate-90-years-later-jake-hinkson-true-historical-film-adaptation-orson-welles-legal-wrangling-suffer-the-children%3fWT.mc_id%3d10144|publisher=criminalelement.com|accessdate=October 23, 2012|author=Jake Hinkson|date=October 19, 2012}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl|title = Compulsion (1959) - IMDb|website = [[IMDb]]}}</ref>

==Cast== {{columns-list| * [[Orson Welles]] as Jonathan Wilk * [[Diane Varsi]] as Ruth Evans * [[Dean Stockwell]] as Judd Steiner * [[Bradford Dillman]] as Artie Straus * [[E.G. Marshall]] as District Attorney Harold Horn * [[Martin Milner]] as Sid Brooks * [[Richard Anderson]] as Max Steiner * [[Robert F. Simon]] as Police Lt. Johnson * [[Edward Binns]] as Tom Daly * [[Robert Burton (actor)|Robert Burton]] as Charles Straus * [[Wilton Graff]] as Mr. Steiner * [[Louise Lorimer]] as Mrs. Straus * [[Gavin MacLeod]] as Padua ;Uncredited * [[Terry Becker]] as Benson * [[Russ Bender]] as Edgar Llewellyn * [[Peter Brocco]] as Albert * [[Alan Carney]] as Globe Newspaper Editor * [[Harry Carter (actor)|Harry Carter]] as Detective Davis * [[Wendell Holmes (actor)|Wendell Holmes]] as Jonas Kessler * [[Jack Raine]] as Professor McKinnon }}

==Production== Orson Welles, whose recent thriller ''[[Touch of Evil]]'' was overlooked in America (though appreciated in Europe), was bitter at not being selected to direct ''Compulsion''. His time on the set was tense, and he threw frequent tantrums.<ref name="Leaming">{{cite book|last1=Leaming|first1=Barbara|title=Orson Welles: A Biography|date=1985|publisher=Viking|location=New York|isbn=978-0670528950|pages=439–43|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KlqsYy512WIC&q=richard+fleischer+compulsion&pg=PA440|accessdate=19 February 2017}}</ref> Bradford Dillman, who played the character based on Dickie Loeb, recalled his experience with Orson Welles: "Although Orson was helpful to me on ''Compulsion'', he was not overly friendly. Welles was not a gregarious person. We didn't have sessions in which we sat around and talked of all the great movies he had done and all the people he had worked with. Orson didn't talk to the other actors. He never talked about the plot, he never talked about the script. He was the last person called on the set. Everything would be rehearsed. You learned to be very wary in a scene that you didn't step on his lines or anything like that."<ref>{{Cite web |title=American Legends Interviews..... Bradford Dillman: Orson Welles: The View from Mount Olympus |url=https://americanlegends.com/Interviews/bradford_dillman_orson_welles.html |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=americanlegends.com}}</ref>

In the early 1950s, [[Meyer Levin]] visited [[Leopold and Loeb|Nathan Leopold]] in prison and requested that Leopold cooperate with him on writing a novel based on the murder (the other murderer, Richard Loeb, was dead by that time). Leopold declined, saying he did not wish his story to be told in fictionalized form, but asked Levin if he could help him write his memoir. Levin was unhappy with that suggestion and wrote the novel anyway, releasing it in 1956. The novel was called ''[[Compulsion (Levin novel)|Compulsion]]'', the book on which the film is based. Leopold read the book and reportedly did not like it. Leopold later wrote that reading the book made him "physically sick{{nbsp}}.... More than once, I had to lay the book down and wait for the nausea to subside. I felt as I suppose a man would feel if he were exposed stark-naked under a strong spotlight before a large audience."<ref>''In Nathan Leopold's Own Words''.[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_LEOW.HTM UMKC archive]. Retrieved August 1, 2014.</ref>

In 1959, Leopold sought unsuccessfully to block production of the film on the grounds that Levin's book had [[privacy law|invaded his privacy]], [[defamation|defamed]] him, profited from his life story, and "intermingled fact and fiction to such an extent that they were indistinguishable."<ref name="e-mailed comment">{{cite web|url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopoldemail.html|title=E-mailed comment|publisher=Law.umkc.edu|accessdate=October 29, 2012|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110203141623/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopoldemail.html|archivedate=February 3, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite court|litigants=Leopold v. Levin, et al.|court=Supreme Court of Illinois|url=http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_SUIT.HTM|date=1970|accessdate=August 1, 2014}}</ref> Eventually, the [[Illinois Supreme Court]] ruled against him,<ref>''Leopold v. Levin'', 259 N.E.2d 250, 255–56 (Ill. 1970); GERTZ, supra note 48, at 166.</ref> noting that Leopold, as the confessed perpetrator of the "crime of the century", could not reasonably demonstrate that Levin's book had damaged his reputation.<ref name="Larson">Larson EJ. ''Murder Will Out: Rethinking the Right of Publicity Through One Classic Case''. [http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~review/vol62n1/Larson_v62n1.pdf Rutgers Law Review archive] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707184157/http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~review/vol62n1/Larson_v62n1.pdf |date=July 7, 2010 }}. Retrieved February 11, 2015.</ref><ref name="e-mailed comment" />

==Reception== At the [[1959 Cannes Film Festival]], Dillman, Dean Stockwell, and Welles won the [[Best Actor Award (Cannes Film Festival)|Best Actor Award]].<ref name="festival-cannes.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3423/year/1959.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Compulsion |accessdate=2009-02-14|work=festival-cannes.com}}</ref> The film was nominated for the [[BAFTA Award for Best Film]] at the [[13th British Academy Film Awards]], [[Richard Fleischer]] was nominated for [[Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film|Best Director]] by [[Directors Guild of America Awards|Directors Guild of America]], and [[Richard Murphy (screenwriter)|Richard Murphy]] was nominated for Best Written American Drama at the [[12th Writers Guild of America Awards]].

In ''[[The New York Times]]'', [[A. H. Weiler]] gave the film a positive review, especially praising the performances of the actors: "In ''Compulsion'', they have made a dark deed into a bright and fascinating picture."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1959/04/02/archives/the-screen-compulsion.html|title=The Screen: 'Compulsion'|author=Weiler, A. H.|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=April 2, 1959}}</ref> The film holds a critics' approval rate of 100% on [[Rotten Tomatoes]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Compulsion|url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/compulsion|language=en|access-date=2021-12-19}}</ref>

==Related== ''Compulsion'' was one of four films Richard Fleischer directed that dramatized real-life murder cases. The others were ''[[The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing]]'' (1955), based on the 1906 murder case involving model and actress [[Evelyn Nesbit]], [[The Boston Strangler (film)|''The Boston Strangler'']] (1968), based on the [[Boston Strangler]] case and [[Albert DeSalvo]], and ''[[10 Rillington Place]]'' (1971), based on [[John Christie (serial killer)|John Christie]] and [[Timothy Evans]].

==See also== * [[Leopold and Loeb]] * ''[[Rope (film)|Rope]]'', [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s 1948 film based on [[Rope (play)|the 1929 play]] by [[Patrick Hamilton (writer)|Patrick Hamilton]], also inspired by the murder. * [[List of American films of 1959]] * ''[[Murder by Numbers]]'', 2002 film directed by [[Barbet Schroeder]]

== Notes == {{notelist}}

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== {{wikiquote|Compulsion (film)|Compulsion (1959 film)}} * {{IMDb title|id=0052700}} * {{AFI film|52849}} * {{TCMDb title|id=71354|title=Compulsion}} * {{Rotten-tomatoes|compulsion|title=Compulsion}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Compulsion}} [[Category:1959 films]] [[Category:1959 crime drama films]] [[Category:1959 English-language films]] [[Category:20th Century Fox films]] [[Category:American black-and-white films]] [[Category:American courtroom films]] [[Category:American crime drama films]] [[Category:American legal drama films]] [[Category:Films about capital punishment]] [[Category:Films about lawyers]] [[Category:Films based on American novels]] [[Category:Films based on the Leopold and Loeb murder]] [[Category:Films à clef]] [[Category:Films directed by Richard Fleischer]] [[Category:Films produced by Richard D. Zanuck]] [[Category:Films scored by Lionel Newman]] [[Category:Films set in 1924]] [[Category:Films set in Chicago]] [[Category:Films shot in Los Angeles]] [[Category:1959 American films]] [[Category:English-language crime drama films]]