Compulsion

Compulsion is based on the novel by Meyer Levin. The story is a fictionalized ac-count of the Leopold-Loeb case from 1924. Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Robert Loeb were two amoral young college students with genius level IQs who thought that they could commit the perfect crime. They abducted a 14-year-old boy on his way home from school and killed him “just for fun.” In the film the two thrill-killers are named Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) and Artie Strauss (Bradford Dillman), but the story is essentially the same. The one clue linking the two to the murder is a pair of glasses that belonged to Judd Steiner. Orson Welles plays famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow, in this cinematic masterpiece. Of special interest is the controversial technique of “subliminal perception” employed by cinematographer William Mellor in scenes involving Stockwell and Dillman. Whenever these actors appeared together or by themselves, Mellor would slightly tilt the camera or cut off part of their heads.