Suspicion

SUSPICION               B+                  

USA  (99 mi)  1941  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

Truffaut: “…you referred to Suspicion and said that the producers would have objected to Cary Grant being the killer.  If I understand correctly, you’d have preferred that he be the guilty one.”

Hitchcock:  “Well, I’m not too pleased with the way Suspicion ends.  I had something else in mind.”

One of the earlier Hitchcock films to explore the subject of hysteria, which, when mixed with murder, always adds a touch of lingering doubt where illusion and reality are often confused.  Hitchcock seems to relish these kinds of stories with perfectly innocent and ordinary people suddenly struck by the idea of murder lurking in their midst, where everything is not as it seems, drawing inferences as to the reasons why, where the tiniest hints or clues grow increasingly large, until eventually they are suffocating and gasping for air on mere ideas and suppositions.  Shot during the middle of his espionage phase, from THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) until NOTORIOUS (1946), the director made a trio of romantic psychological thrillers about naïve and less than suspecting women falling for shady and darkly disturbing men with something to hide in REBECCA (1940), SUSPICION (1941), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943).  Like the latter film which opens with The Merry Widow Waltz, Hitchcock uses another waltz musical theme, initially heard with romantic inclinations at a huntsman’s ball, Johann Strauss, Jr. - Vienna Blood Waltz, Op. 354 ... YouTube (2:23), but later it becomes a trigger for suspected foulplay.  While the original novel Before the Fact, by Francis Iles, is much darker in tone, adapted by Samson Raphaelson, Hitchcock’s personal assistant Joan Harrison and his wife Alma Reville, much has been made of the studio’s insistence to alter the ending, substantially changing the outcome, offering a lighter and more hopeful world of optimistic possibilities instead of concluding with a corpse and the damning evidence of a murderous psychopath on the loose.  Hitchcock obviously preferred the latter, but this was his first time working with Cary Grant, already considered too popular a star and the biggest star Hitchcock had ever worked with at this point, so RKO studios insisted he be a hero instead of the villain, culminating with a substitute ending.  Later Grant and Hitchcock collaborated on NOTORIOUS (1946), TO CATCH A THIEF (1955), and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959).         

Oddly, this was Hitchcock’s second Hollywood movie, yet for all practical purposes this is a British film made in Hollywood, where the actors, the setting, and the overall atmosphere are decidedly British.  Initially the tone is more of a screwball comedy, where Cary Grant as Johnnie seems to operate outside normal social boundaries, where right off the bat he’s a bit of a scam artist trying to use a 3rd class train ticket for a 1st class seat, where sitting across from him is Joan Fontaine as Lina, much more reserved and proper hiding behind her glasses, but she recognizes his picture in the social columns, as he’s apparently a handsome and eligible bachelor, usually with several girls on his arm.  When she runs into him again, seemingly no accident, as she’s the daughter of a wealthy general, he sweeps her off her feet in no time with his playful rakish charm, where despite her father’s warnings that he could be a fortune hunter, she decides to defy her family’s heeding in hopes of getting away from their restricting confinement.  Despite her overprotected and well-behaved demeanor, she’s smitten by his liberated and carefree manner, not to mention his looks, so after an enchanted evening of dancing at the Hunt Club Ball, they elope the next day, where Johnny assumes her wealthy family will cover the cost, as they honeymoon in extravagance, not to mention the luxurious home Johnnie has picked out for them to live.  Always on different wavelengths, Lina is shocked to discover Johnnie hasn’t a penny to his name, that he survives on borrowing from others, living life recklessly as a compulsive gambler, where he’ll throw his life savings on a whim at the track.  Even though Lina remains in denial for a good portion of the film, the audience quickly learns Johnnie’s a compulsive liar and a thief, an amoral man capable of doing just about anything to get what he wants, living behind a pack of lies, where his story often changes by the second.  For Lina, order and morality are so ingrained in her upbringing, she remains naïve to all of Johnny’s dastardly deeds, while the man seemingly hasn’t a care in the world.  Hitchcock leaves plenty of hints for the audience, however, never offering any proof, though it’s clear Johnny is something of a scoundrel and a cheat, and perhaps, as cleverly discovered in a Scrabble like board game, capable of “murder.”                

Like Shadow of a Doubt, this is a dark comedy that relishes its little wickedness, opening in near farce, but the mood of frivolity suddenly turns darker with the arrival of one of Johnnie’s friends, Nigel Bruce as Beaky, a kind of dim-witted but jovial fellow who knows the true colors of his friend, a side seldom seen by his new wife, who’s always the last to know, discovering Johnnie quit his job and embezzled funds, pawned family heirlooms, and spent the proceeds at the race track.  It’s never explained how they continue to live in this outrageously lavish country estate on no income coming in, but it’s certain Johnnie has no intention of working for a living.  When Lina’s father suddenly dies of a stroke, Johnnie’s the picture of disappointment at the reading of the will, discovering Daddy didn’t leave much, never trusting his marital intentions.  Instead he develops an incessant fascination with the local murder mystery writer, Auriol Lee, literally pumping her for ways to commit murder, hoping to discover the perfect untraceable poison, where a close up shot of the Cornish hen they’re eating suddenly looms ominously over the dinner proceedings.  When Johnnie has to step up and earn a living, he rudely berates his wife for interfering in his business when he and Beaky develop a little real estate scheme that seems doomed from the outset, eyeing an undeveloped oceanfront location called Tangmere-by-the-sea, which is actually shot near Carmel, south of San Francisco, supposedly financed by Beaky’s lifetime savings.  When Beaky suddenly turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Lina begins to shudder with horror and disbelief that her husband may have murdered him, thinking she could be next, literally fearing for her life, especially when he shows up without a word after going missing for awhile.  Like Marnie (1964), another film about a pathological liar, Hitchcock resorts to German Expressionist imagery, where Johnnie is projected as a shadow on the wall, while Lina is seen hovering in fear in the living room, where shadowed outlines on the floor reveal what appears to be a web or a cage, where she’s helplessly locked inside.  One of the more memorable images is a ghoulish image of Johnnie stepping out of the dark carrying a glass of milk up the stairs, where Hitchcock has the milk illuminated with a light bulb in the glass, drawing attention to the poisonous possibilities.  The finale takes place in a frantic car scene with the cliffs lurking below, where certain death or doom feels all but certain.  Joan Fontaine won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance of a woman losing her psychological bearings, the only such Oscar for a performance in a Hitchcock film.  Not for the fainthearted, the clever and lighthearted humor of the opening turns into a threatening and suffocating atmosphere of menacing dread and foreboding, perhaps Hitchcock's definitive comment on marriage.