# Compulsion (1959 film)
**Compulsion** is a 1959 American black-and-white courtroom drama directed by [Richard Fleischer](https://www.edgepedia.org/richard-fleischer), adapted from Meyer Levin's 1956 novel of the same name and based on the 1924 [Leopold and Loeb](https://www.edgepedia.org/leopold-and-loeb) murder case in Chicago. It stars [Orson Welles](https://www.edgepedia.org/orson-welles) as the defense attorney Jonathan Wilk, modeled on Clarence Darrow, with Dean Stockwell as Judd Steiner and Bradford Dillman as Artie Straus, the two wealthy students who kill a boy to commit a "perfect crime."[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) • [2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review) In France the film was released as *Le Génie du mal*.[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/f/compulsion/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / writer | Richard Fleischer; screenplay by Richard Murphy, from Meyer Levin's 1956 novel[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) |
| Producer | Richard D. Zanuck, then 24 years old; his first film as producer[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) • [4](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/58691/1/12pdf.pdf) |
| Cast | Orson Welles (Jonathan Wilk), Dean Stockwell (Judd Steiner), Bradford Dillman (Artie Straus), Diane Varsi (Ruth Evans), E.G. Marshall (District Attorney Harold Horn)[5](https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf00n2.html) |
| Source case | The 1924 murder of 14-year-old Robert Franks by University of Chicago law students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) |
| Cannes 1959 | In competition for the Palme d'Or; Welles, Stockwell, and Dillman jointly won the Best Actor award[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/awards/) |
| Runtime / format | 103 minutes, black and white; US theatrical release April 1, 1959[7](https://www.filmportal.de/film/compulsion_fe4c7c3c30f24df1bcb86bc8d2e975d7) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Chicago, 1924. Judd Steiner ([Dean Stockwell](https://www.edgepedia.org/dean-stockwell)) and Artie Straus ([Bradford Dillman](https://www.edgepedia.org/bradford-dillman)), law students at the University of Chicago from wealthy families, steal a typewriter from a fraternity house and then drink to the execution of the perfect crime. Artie, domineering and hooked on the Nietzschean superman who stands beyond good and evil, orders Judd to run down a drunk they pass in the car; Judd swerves at the last second. It is all rehearsal for the real thing.
The real thing is Paulie Kessler, a neighborhood boy they lure into a rented car, kill, and dump in a culvert, then demand ransom for by a carefully typed letter. The plan is flawless except that it is committed by two showoffs who want credit for a crime no one can trace. The ransom scheme collapses almost immediately: the body is found before the money changes hands, and the killers have no way to collect without exposing themselves.
The investigation falls to District Attorney Horn ([E. G. Marshall](https://www.edgepedia.org/e-g-marshall)), a patient, methodical prosecutor who begins pulling threads. Reporters swarm, and Artie, in his element, spins theories for the press while Judd quietly unravels. Then comes the detail that breaks the case. **A pair of horn-rimmed glasses is found near the body, and Horn lays them on a table in front of Judd and waits.** Paulie never wore glasses; the frames are an expensive, rare prescription, and Judd realizes with sickening slowness that they are his own, dropped at the scene. Fleischer holds the moment in a long static shot as the truth lands on the boy's face and the case closes around him. Separated for interrogation, the two suspects begin confessing over each other, each convinced the other has already talked, each alibi collapsing into a duel of accusations about whose idea the murder really was.
With both boys facing the gallows and public opinion howling, the families bring in Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles), a famous, shaggy, theatrical defense attorney modeled on [Clarence Darrow](https://www.edgepedia.org/clarence-darrow). Wilk appears only in the final act, but he changes the film's whole register. His strategy is a gamble: he will have his clients plead guilty, removing any question of innocence, and stake everything on a single argument that they should not be hanged. The trial becomes not a contest of guilt but a plea for mercy, and Wilk measures the two boys in quiet cell conversations, weighing not their sanity but what they are.
**Wilk's closing summation is the film's summit, and it stops the picture dead to deliver it.** Drawn largely from the real Darrow transcript, it runs as a sustained address against the death penalty: does the state have any more right to kill than an individual, and do two young men shaped by wealth, indulgence, and each other deserve to be extinguished by it? Welles plays it in a rumbling, unhurried cadence, all grave pauses and gathering force, while Fleischer cuts to the faces of jurors and spectators so the speech lands as an event happening to people in the room rather than a recording. Horn, who has fought him every step, waits until Wilk takes his seat before rising, a small gesture of respect between professionals.
The judge sentences both boys to life imprisonment. In the last scenes Artie keeps performing, charming to the end, while Judd faces the arithmetic of the rest of his life with a melancholy Stockwell carries in his face and posture. The perfect crime has cost them everything but their lives.
### Characters
Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is the follower, a repressed, bird-loving intellectual whose devotion to Artie has an ache to it. He swerves away from the hit-and-run, drops the glasses, and cracks under interrogation; the murder is, in some terrible sense, his attempt to be seen by the person he admires most.
Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman) is the showman, domineering and sadistic, preaching the superman doctrine as license for his own appetites. Charming in front of reporters and hollow underneath, he insists to the end that the crime proved their superiority.
Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles) is the defense counsel based on Clarence Darrow, top-billed despite not appearing until the final hour of the film. His plea against hanging the boys is the film's centerpiece [12](https://www.derekwinnert.com/compulsion-1959-dean-stockwell-bradford-dillman-orson-welles-e-g-marshall-classic-movie-review-1674/).
District Attorney Horn (E. G. Marshall) is the prosecutor whose suspicion sharpens scene by scene, from the glasses on the table to the trial itself. Ruth (Diane Varsi) is a young woman in the boys' circle whose loyalty to Judd gives the pre-trial stretch its one tender thread.
### Interpretations and controversies
The film hews close to the 1924 Leopold and Loeb case, and reality pushed back. Nathan Leopold, the real-life counterpart of Judd Steiner, had been freed on parole in 1958 after nearly 34 years in prison [13](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetailsPrintView/52849), and in 1959 he sued Meyer Levin, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Twentieth Century-Fox for $1,405,000 in damages [13](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetailsPrintView/52849). Levin, a journalist who had covered the original case and Leopold's best friend, had testified unasked at Leopold's parole hearing, and some argued the book and film helped sway the parole board by giving a human face to the crime [5](https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf00n2.html). Critics have also debated the film's handling of the case's psychology: Time Out called it an emasculated version of Levin's novel and dismissed Welles's summation as a hokey boil-down of Darrow's two-day plea [11](https://www.timeout.com/movies/compulsion).
### Sequels, prequels, and universe
*Compulsion* is one of three notable screen versions of the Leopold and Loeb case, alongside [Alfred Hitchcock](https://www.edgepedia.org/alfred-hitchcock)'s *Rope* (1948) and the 1992 indie *Swoon* [14](https://www.mondo-digital.com/compulsion.html). It has no sequels.
## The historical case
The film follows the notorious 1924 case of Nathan Leopold (1904–1971) and Richard Loeb (1905–1936), eighteen-year-old law students at the University of Chicago who killed fourteen-year-old Robert Franks for thrills. Clarence Darrow defended them, and his closing argument lasted two days; several verbatim passages from that closing were included in the film's script.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) In the film, the key evidence against the pair is a pair of eyeglasses left at the crime scene, along with a fabricated alibi and Steiner's candor with the police.[8](https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/lawyers-in-film-compulsion-%281959%29)
The characters' names were changed: Judd Steiner is based on Leopold and Artie Straus on Loeb, while the victim becomes Paulie Kessler and Darrow becomes Jonathan Wilk.[8](https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/lawyers-in-film-compulsion-%281959%29) Despite the renaming and some invented subsidiary figures, the film sticks closely to the real case.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review)
## From novel to stage to screen
Levin's novel was published by [Simon & Schuster](https://www.edgepedia.org/simon-and-schuster) in 1956 and became a bestseller; a 1956 review described it as a psychoanalytic adaptation of the Loeb-Leopold case, "superb both in quality as fiction and in fidelity to fact."[4](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/58691/1/12pdf.pdf) • [9](https://kc-johnson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/larson-article.pdf) Levin adapted it into a stage play, which opened at the Ambassador Theatre on West 49th Street in New York City on October 24, 1957, with [Roddy McDowall](https://www.edgepedia.org/roddy-mcdowall) as Artie Straus and Dean Stockwell as Judd Steiner, and ran until February 24, 1958, for 140 performances.[4](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/58691/1/12pdf.pdf)
According to studio publicity in the production files at the AMPAS Library, Levin sold the literary rights to [Darryl F. Zanuck](https://www.edgepedia.org/darryl-f-zanuck) on the condition that production wait until the play's Broadway run was completed. Zanuck, busy with *Roots of Heaven*, handed the production to his son Richard, for whom *Compulsion* was the first film as producer.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) Filming ran from early October to early November 1958.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION)
## Leopold's lawsuit
Leopold, who had been freed on parole in 1958 after serving almost 34 years in prison, sued Levin, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Twentieth Century-Fox in 1959 for $1,405,000 in damages, claiming the film invaded his privacy.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) In 1964 a summary judgment went in his favor, but in 1968 that ruling was reversed after the court decided the matter belonged to the public domain.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION) A later account describes the suit against Levin as dismissed, on the reasoning that any privacy rights had been forfeited by the so-called "crime of the century."[8](https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/lawyers-in-film-compulsion-%281959%29)
## Reception and legacy
At the 1959 Cannes Film Festival the film competed for the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor), and the three principals, Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, and Bradford Dillman, were jointly given the Best Actor award.[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/awards/) • [10](https://www.filmfestival.be/en/film/compulsion) The film later received a BAFTA nomination for Best Film from any Source (1960), a DGA Award nomination for Fleischer, and a WGA nomination for Richard Murphy's screenplay.[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/awards/)
**Fleischer's true-crime films.** The critic Philip French placed *Compulsion* among four films in which Fleischer, who had switched from medicine to drama as a student in the 1930s, studied famous real-life murderers: *The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing* (1955), *Compulsion*, *The Boston Strangler* (1968), and *10 Rillington Place* (1971).[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review)
**The Darrow summation.** Welles's climactic courtroom speech condenses Darrow's plea against execution; French notes that Darrow's flowery 12-hour speech was reduced to about 10 minutes on screen.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review) A Time Out review called the film fine so long as it sticks to the thriller format but shaky in its 1924 Chicago period sense, with a best performance from Stockwell.[11](https://www.timeout.com/movies/compulsion)
The same case inspired Alfred Hitchcock's *[Rope](https://www.edgepedia.org/rope-film)* (1948) and Tom Kalin's *Swoon* (1992), making *Compulsion* one of several screen treatments of the Leopold-Loeb story.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review)
## References
1. [Compulsion (1959), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52849-COMPULSION)
2. [Philip French, "Compulsion – review," The Guardian, 10 October 2010](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/10/compulsion-classic-dvd-review)
3. [Compulsion (Le Génie du mal), Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/f/compulsion/)
4. [History in the Media: Film and Television, "Compulsion (1959)"](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/58691/1/12pdf.pdf)
5. [Film Notes: Compulsion, New York State Writers Institute](https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf00n2.html)
6. [Compulsion (1959) – Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052700/awards/)
7. [Compulsion, filmportal.de](https://www.filmportal.de/film/compulsion_fe4c7c3c30f24df1bcb86bc8d2e975d7)
8. ["Lawyers in film: Compulsion (1959)," Counsel, Bar of England and Wales](https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/lawyers-in-film-compulsion-%281959%29)
9. ["An American Tragedy: Retelling the Leopold-Loeb Story in Popular Culture"](https://kc-johnson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/larson-article.pdf)
10. [Compulsion, Film Fest Gent](https://www.filmfestival.be/en/film/compulsion)
11. [Compulsion (1959) film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/compulsion)
12. [https://www.derekwinnert.com/compulsion-1959-dean-stockwell-bradford-dillman-orson-welles-e-g-marshall-classic-movie-review-1674/](https://www.derekwinnert.com/compulsion-1959-dean-stockwell-bradford-dillman-orson-welles-e-g-marshall-classic-movie-review-1674/)
13. [https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetailsPrintView/52849](https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetailsPrintView/52849)
14. [https://www.mondo-digital.com/compulsion.html](https://www.mondo-digital.com/compulsion.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1950s films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license