Suspicion
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Movie Reviews of Suspicion
Movie Review: Twisted love
Summary: 5 Stars
Suspenseful and fun. Grant and Fontaine are newlyweds in this film but is love or murder on their minds? A Hitchcock class-"macguffin" and all.Movie Review: 5 for Grant
Summary: 5 Stars
If you look past the dated camera work, sets, all that, you have a great movie. 9 out of 10 Grant movies should automatically get 5 starsMovie Review: One of my top favorite movies
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm just so thankful to find this wonderful movie on DVD and in such good condition and so affordable!Movie Review: Before the Fact!
Summary: 4 Stars
Shy but beautiful Lina falls for Johnny, a guy who gambles, loses often, is a pathological liar and lives off other people's money. After they elope, she begins to fear for her life when she discovers Johnny's dark past and real intentions in this Hitchcock thriller.
Scene: Is going to run away with John to elope; touching scene when she walks in to her parents room -- dad smoking his pipe; mother crocheting -- and though they do not suspect a thing, she is torn with guilt. Joan Fontaine's acting in this scene is quite heart-wrenching!
Some humor: it seems dear Johnny lives off other peoples' money and when asked by his new wife how is he going to pay for this new house, the maid, etc., he says, "Borrow more!" When she says get a job, he does a double-take! Oh brother!
Or when he gets two antique chairs from his new father-in-law, his first thought is to sell them, as he shrugs to the audience.
Suspicion spends a lot of time on the romance and the "look what I got myself into" sort of plot between these newlyweds.
But soon, she begins to suspect a dark side to Johnny, a side that may mean her murder at his hands!
He said he had a job, but his best pal Beaky says that he was at the races! Oh, what happened to the antique chairs? He sold them to pay his gambling and betting debts! Oh boy! "Well, of course it's Johnny!"
She finds her antiques in an antique shop -- soon after, he gets her a mink, jewels and Beekie a cane! He won a bit of money in the races. Lina is shocked! "See, that's Johnny!" Where did he get the money? She forgives him when he buys the chairs back.
The first half of the film runs like a romantic comedy for sure, complete with flutes and silly music in the background.
But the music gets darker as Lina is finding out more and more that her husband lives off other people's wealth and she's not happy about it. She finds that he was at the races again, even though he promised he wouldn't and also that he was caught embezzling from his employer who laid him off six weeks before and never told her. The employer/cousin is played by Leo G. Carroll, who appeared in several Hitchcock films over the years.
Lina has had enough, packs her bags and writes a letter telling him that she is leaving him. Another emotional scene, as she writes these words and realizes what they mean to her as well as to their relationship. Touching stuff. But then she rips up the letter. Johnny then walks into the room and they have a confrontation. However, he reveals that her father has passed away and hands her the telegram.
Now, all through the film there have been the comments here and there "Do you think I'm trying to kill you?" and other such murderous thoughts that she does not "tweak" on until later in the film.
The famous milk scene when an apparently glowing glass of milk is taken up the stairs and presented to his wife. And earlier, Johnny was asking someone about an odorless, tasteless poison.
The end of the film is gripping and suspenseful. The beginning though plays like an average tired romantic film. It's not sure if it wants to be a "chick flick" or a romantic "murder mystery."
I'm happy to report that Hitchcock polished his skills as a director in the 1950s, but Suspicion, though well done, does not yet meet the bar set by later films.
As a final note, I like the 1940s chaste kissing in romantic films better than the "eating face" slobbering of some of today's romantic films and television. There was more an air of mystery and excitement in these films that one is hard-pressed to discover today in most films. Some romantic films do have that charm, such as the recent "The Proposal." But these are rare.
Joan Fontaine won Best Actress for her portrayal of the bookish, conservative Lina.
Other Joan Fontaine Films:
The Bigamist (1953) [Remastered Edition]
Island in the Sun
Movie Review: Very good early Hitchcock; misses the top tier due to questionable casting. Nice DVD package
Summary: 4 Stars
Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for her performance in 1941's "Suspicion." The previous year she had portrayed a very similar character in Hitchcock's "Rebecca - Criterion Collection." Lina McLaidlaw is a slightly more confident and sophisticated version of The Second Mrs. de Winter. Both characters are naïve young Englishwomen, swept off their feet by handsome worldly men. They discover too late that the men they married may be capable of anything - even murder.
After the briefest possible acquaintance, Lina defies her family's wishes and elopes with Johnnie Aysgarth. Her father has warned her that Johnnie is wild. Society whispers about his crimes, possibly cheating at cards or being named correspondent in a divorce. He is a man who has disgraced his name and his family, and now lives on the fringes of polite society surviving only only on his looks and his charm. General McLaidlaw does not approve of Johnnie, but Lina doesn't care.
Almost immediately after they return from the honeymoon, Lina begins to learn that her new husband is not the man she imagined. The first revelation is that he is completely broke, living on borrowed funds, and expects to be supported by Lina's allowance from her family - and one day to live in style on her inheritance.
As the film progresses, the suspense is masterfully built up as Lina learns that Johnnie is also a liar, a thief, a gambler, and an embezzler. His addiction to the horses has left him perpetually broke and desperate for funds. She begins to suspect that, in order to get money, Johnnie will stop at nothing, not even the murder of his best friend... or the murder of his wife.
If there is a flaw in this film, it's casting Cary Grant as the notorious Johnnie Aysgarth. Hitchcock once said that one didn't direct Cary Grant, one simply put him in front of a camera. He certainly has the looks and charm; but is he believable as a villain? For the movie to really work, you have to believe that Cary Grant is capable of a host of heinous sins. Hitchcock really strains suspension of disbelief here.
As Johnnie's best friend, Beaky, Nigel Bruce give us his trademark good natured, bumbling Englishman character - very similar to his version of Dr. Watson in The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection.
Hitchcock is a master with black and white cinematography. In one of the film's most famous scenes, Johnnie slowly climbs a curving staircase, carrying a tray with a single glass of milk to his ailing wife. The house is dark, Johnnie is seen only as a shadowy silhouette, but the glass of milk actually glows on the screen. Hitchcock wanted us to focus on that glass. Could it contain...poison?
The film also boasts a beautiful score by Franz Waxman built around Lina and Johnnie's love theme, the Strauss waltz, "Vienna Blood."
The DVD has an English only soundtrack with available subtitles in English, French or Spanish. It also includes an original theatrical trailer, and a documentary about the making of the film and the transition between the source material (Before the Fact (Pan Classic Crime)) and the changes made by Hitchcock and the studio.
This is one of Hitchcock's best early efforts, but it would have been an even better film had the studio not interfered with his original vision. Nevertheless, it's still a very good movie. Recommended.