I talked about the story elsewhere, but this is for the SHOTS! Hitchcock’s camera emphasise the slow poisoning in wonderful ways; here’s the first scene with the drugged coffee We see the whole room, Alexander and Anna bracketing Alicia; boxing her in to poison her. The first cut is to Alexander as he urges Alicia to drink her coffee then — instead of a cut (anyone can just cut to something!), the camera takes its cue from Alexander setting down his cigar tool to drift over, to see the cup ‘solo’d’ in frame, pausing, then following it to Alicia’s mouth for a sip. We have no doubts she’s taken in the poison.