No one knew it, but 69 years ago, the poster for this great thriller classic revealed the ending of the film.

Spoilers – Warning, the article below contains potential spoilers. If you do not wish to know its contents, please do not read the following…

There are films in the cinema that make the decision to completely hide their outcome from the audience, without letting them see what is being made. There are those who, on the contrary and accidentally, announce the end of their plot from their title. And among them there are those who decide to play with their audience. Offer him a treasure hunt or a challenge.

It’s one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous thrillers, razor-thin and packed with excellent plot: The Crime Was Almost Perfect, directed by the master of suspense in 1955. Like his character, you’ll find that the film drops (incidentally or not) a hint of its final resolution in the French title, but also on its poster.

Indeed, even if the feature film was originally called “Dial M for Murder”, the French audience immediately knew that things would not turn out as the film’s antagonist predicted, just by reading the title: the crime was almost perfect.

Starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings, the film follows the dark plans of Tony Wendys, a former sports champion who tries to kill Margot, his wealthy wife, when he learns that she is cheating on him. Fearing that she will leave him penniless, he cunningly convinces Swann, an acquaintance of his, to take responsibility for the murder one evening when he is seen in public, so that no one will suspect him.

But on the night of the murder, Margot defends herself and kills her assailant with a pair of scissors: the film’s title warned us that the crime should not go as planned. It doesn’t stop there, as Tony deftly and thoroughly manages to frame Margot for Swann’s premeditated murder, making the young woman’s self-defense look like a blackmail reaction.

However, this new Tony crime isn’t perfect. And now it is to the poster of the movie, covered with a huge key, that we must turn to guess where the flaw comes from. Indeed, thanks to the inspector’s insight and a simple misplaced key, Tony is eventually unmasked and found guilty of the whole story.

A small grain of sand that would cause his Machiavellian mechanics to take hold and which the French distributors took care to leave in front of the audience on the movie poster to engage them directly.

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