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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus |
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COMPULSION
An American classic to be rediscovered:
Meyer Levin's bestselling 1956 novel chronicling the infamous Leopold Loeb murder begat a blockbuster film and, ultimately, a blockbuster lawsuit. The Leopold-Loeb case has fascinated the public for decades, inspiring everything from a Hitchcock film (Rope, 1948) to a Law and Order episode.
In 1924, two wealthy, brilliant teenage law students murdered a young boy for the thrill of committing a perfect crime. When the crime proved, in fact, imperfect, the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow signed on to defend them. Americans followed the trial obsessively, shocked and fascinated by the two young men and their Nietzschean justification of their actions. Compulsion followed the story of the Leopold-Loeb murder and trial so closely that, as its first reviewer pointed out, "any libelous statement would still be actionable". (He was right--once released from prison, Nathan Leopold, one of the murderers, won a suit against Levin for libel.) From Levin's stunningly detailed account, the 'non-fiction' or 'documentary' novel was born, a strategy emulated by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood and by Norman Mailer, a great admirer of Levin's work, in The Executioner's Song.
In 1959, the film hit theaters with a star-studded cast and crew. Oscar winner Richard Fleischer directed, Oscar nominee Richard Murphy wrote the screenplay, and with the legendary Orson Welles portraying Clarence Darrow and ingenues Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell playing the precocious murderers, 20th Century Fox's Compulsion was an instant hit. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Black Orpheus won that year), and the three lead actors shared the Best Actor award at Cannes, marking the first and only time Orson Welles won a major acting award. In 1995, Compulsion was rereleased as part of Fox's Studio Classics series, and the DVD is currently available and selling steadily on Amazon.com.
The New York Times called the novel "a masterly achievement in literary craftsmanship ... Entertaining, shocking, enlightening, and fascinating"; The Herald Tribune said COMPULSION was "A book that can take its place with Dreiser's An American Tragedy... Levin succeeds brilliantly in creating high suspense in his fictional retelling." The Saturday Review named it "a graphic and absorbing reconstruction of the crime of the century."
(Deutsch: "Zwang", S. Fischer 1958, Fischer TB 1961)
Meyer Levin's bestselling 1956 novel chronicling the infamous Leopold Loeb murder begat a blockbuster film and, ultimately, a blockbuster lawsuit. The Leopold-Loeb case has fascinated the public for decades, inspiring everything from a Hitchcock film (Rope, 1948) to a Law and Order episode.
In 1924, two wealthy, brilliant teenage law students murdered a young boy for the thrill of committing a perfect crime. When the crime proved, in fact, imperfect, the famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow signed on to defend them. Americans followed the trial obsessively, shocked and fascinated by the two young men and their Nietzschean justification of their actions. Compulsion followed the story of the Leopold-Loeb murder and trial so closely that, as its first reviewer pointed out, "any libelous statement would still be actionable". (He was right--once released from prison, Nathan Leopold, one of the murderers, won a suit against Levin for libel.) From Levin's stunningly detailed account, the 'non-fiction' or 'documentary' novel was born, a strategy emulated by Truman Capote in In Cold Blood and by Norman Mailer, a great admirer of Levin's work, in The Executioner's Song.
In 1959, the film hit theaters with a star-studded cast and crew. Oscar winner Richard Fleischer directed, Oscar nominee Richard Murphy wrote the screenplay, and with the legendary Orson Welles portraying Clarence Darrow and ingenues Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell playing the precocious murderers, 20th Century Fox's Compulsion was an instant hit. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Black Orpheus won that year), and the three lead actors shared the Best Actor award at Cannes, marking the first and only time Orson Welles won a major acting award. In 1995, Compulsion was rereleased as part of Fox's Studio Classics series, and the DVD is currently available and selling steadily on Amazon.com.
The New York Times called the novel "a masterly achievement in literary craftsmanship ... Entertaining, shocking, enlightening, and fascinating"; The Herald Tribune said COMPULSION was "A book that can take its place with Dreiser's An American Tragedy... Levin succeeds brilliantly in creating high suspense in his fictional retelling." The Saturday Review named it "a graphic and absorbing reconstruction of the crime of the century."
(Deutsch: "Zwang", S. Fischer 1958, Fischer TB 1961)
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Book
Published by Simon & Schuster |