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).

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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


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Quotes from Compulsion:

Arthur Straus: The neighborhood is swarming with kidnappers and degenerates!


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.


Judd Steiner: Please, Artie - I'll do anything you say.
Arthur Straus: Anything?


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Facts about Compulsion:

The original play included what was then a modern-day sequence. This was omitted from the film. It showed several of the characters thirty years after the story took place.
Average Shot Length & Median Shot Length = ~11 seconds.
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.
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Also directed by Richard Fleischer




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Also produced by Richard D. Zanuck




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Also released in 1959




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