Week 4: Suspicion (1941)

Suspicion opens with wild playboy Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) encountering timid bookworm, Lina  (Joan Fontaine) in a train. He soon sets out to woo her, and the two secretly marry, against her father’s wishes. . But she soon begins to discover that he is not the man he seems to be. He gambles, lies, manipulates, and even steals. Eventually, she starts to believe he may be involved in even worse crimes and begins to suspect that he is planning to kill her. It is based on the novel Before the Fact by Anthony Berkeley. 

 

For the first half of the film, the suspense is fairly lacking. But Hitchcock manages to make up for it by packing as much suspense as possible into the last 40 minutes or so of the film. The genius in this is that we as the viewers take an emotional journey with Lina. We have a sense of calm when she is unaware of the dark side of Johnnie. As she discovers more information and realizes she is in danger, we feel the full effect of the suspense. This is one of the rare film noirs in which the potential victim finds out every detail well before the climax of the film. It is both intriguing and successful. 

 Fontaine won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Lina, and her characterization was very convincing. She pulls at the heartstrings of the viewer as her panic builds up, and quite successfully works herself into a frenzy of confusion. This was the second year in a row she worked with Hitchcock, following Rebecca from the previous year. The two characters were very similar, and she enjoyed working with him very much. 

This was Grant’s first chance to work with Hitchcock, and he of course became a long term favorite of Hitchcock’s, collaborating three more times. His jovial performance is excellent. As always with Grant, you can’t help but siding with him even when he is in the wrong. 

I have always struggled with my feelings for this film. Although I do enjoy it, and would not turn down any chance to watch it, like most Hitchcock films, it will in my mind never be one of the elite. This is for two reasons. 

The first is the ending. This is another one of Hitchcock’s films where the original ending was very different than the one he ended up with, but the studio shot down what he filmed. In some cases, like in I Confess, the new ending doesn’t harm the film. In the case of Suspicion, it does. It changes the entire message of the film. The problem here is that the rest of the movie had already been filmed. So all the subtle symbology, all our Hitchcock film noir clues, are now essentially useless and contradictory. In this case, we are left with a less than satisfactory message that only comes through when you force yourself to try to see the rest of the film through the eyes of the final scene. 

The second and more prominent reason I don’t adore this film is Lina’s character. With very few exceptions Hitchcock women are notoriously awful creatures. They are weak, silly, frivolous, gullible, or just plain stupid. But Lina really takes the cake—she is all of the above. She stays with Johnnie after she finds out that he married her with every intention of living off her father’s money, after he sells the fine, antique chairs her father gave her as a wedding gift to bet on the horses, after he lies to her about having a job, after she suspects him of murder, even after she believes he plans to murder her. At some point, I just want to pause the movie, reach into the screen, and shake or slap some sense into her. This is not a fault with Fontaine’s acting by any means, it’s just the way the character is written. 

Ultimately, this film is worth a watch, if for no other reason, than for the famous scene of Johnnie carrying a glass of milk which Lina knows is poisoned up the stairs to her room. Hitchcock put a light in the glass to give it an ethereal glow, solidifying that film’s place in film history. It is an epic scene.

Good evening!