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Is Cary Grant plotting to murder Joan Fontaine? Oh the Suspicion. |
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant (Johnnie Aysgarth), Joan Fontaine (Lina
Aysgarth), Nigel Bruce (Gordon Cochrane ‘Beaky’ Thwaite), Cedric Hardwicke
(General McLaidlow), May Whitty (Martha McLaidlow), Isabel Jeans (Helen Newsham),
Heather Angel (Ethel), Auriol Lee (Isabel Sedbusk), Leo G Carroll (Captain
George Malbeck)
What do you do when you suddenly start to believe you might
be living in a murder mystery? When you begin to think that the person you are
married to might just be planning to dispatch you as well? That’s the big
suspicion that haunts the mind of Lina Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine), a shy and meek
heiress who has been charmed into marrying waster Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary
Grant), a lazy spendthrift and playboy. After they elope together, she quickly
finds out that Johnnie has no work ethic or talent at all other than spending
money. As real estate deals fall through, and Johnnie steals money from his
employer to cover his debts, Lina starts to worry that her life insurance is
looking more and more tempting to Johnnie.
Suspicion is a
decent, middle-of-the-road Hitchcock thriller, which deals with familiar themes
of doubt, dread and (of course) suspicion, but with Hitchcock very much in
second gear. He’s not helped by the neutering of the source material. The
original novel is very much a story of a woman who works out that her husband
is definitely trying to kill her. The producers here, however, couldn’t abide
the idea that CARY GRANT could be
plotting to kill his wife. So the story is rejigged at the end to turn Lina
into a silly, paranoid woman and Johnnie into, well yes a playboy, but also one
who has been treated badly because of the suspicion thrown at him. This may
have flown in 1941, but it’s impossibly sexist today. Plus it means the whole
film basically builds towards – well – nothing.
Hitchcock throws in the odd decent flourish – most famously
the carefully lit glass of milk that Johnnie carries up the stairs near the
film’s end, which may or may not be poisoned. But far too often the story seems
to be taking place in a fairytale England, of horses riding to hounds, country
villages, Agatha Christie style authors dispensing accidental poisoning advice,
and careful class structures. For all the odd moments of danger, the film is
safe, contained and as unthreatening as it can get. But the rest is Hitch on
autopilot, which feels at time as a remix of the director’s earlier Oscar
winning film Rebecca.
That mood carries across to Joan Fontaine as well in the
lead role. Fresh off working with Hitchcock on Rebecca, Fontaine essentially recreates the same role again here as
the timid, shy, would-be dutiful wife who wants to see the best in a husband
who in fact seems dangerous and unknowable. Fontaine won the Oscar for this
film – but it feels as much like a compensation award for her previous defeat
for Rebecca as it does for Suspicion. Really she does very little
here that lifts the film, or stretches her as a performer from her previous
role. It’s a retread, and while it’s a trick she does well, it’s a trick she
has done before.
A far more challenging performance comes from Cary Grant,
who uses the role as a clever meta-commentary on his own persona. Johnnie has
all the charm and engaging bonhomie of Grant himself, but all subtly twisted
with a selfish superficiality and wastrel greed. Grant walks a very fine line
of a man who could be plotting to
murder his wife or could just be a
greedy chancer – and walks it very well indeed. You always see that Johnnie is
bad news, while also understanding why Lina finds him so engaging. It’s a
terrifically skilled performance, a lovely riff on Grant’s own screen persona,
that shows he’s a far better actor than people often give him credit for – and
you feel he is only too willing to embrace the chance to play a weak-willed,
opportunistic murderer with little conscience (except of course it turns out he
isn’t a murderer).
It’s a shame that nothing else in the film really rises to
the occasion in the same way (although Nigel Bruce gives a very good
performance as the gentle, ageing playboy Beaky). The film itself never really
seems to be heading anywhere – it even takes a good two-thirds of its runtime
before Lina begins to wake up to the fact that Johnnie is far from being the
sort of husband women should dream of. It’s a bit slow, a bit too safe, and it
largely lacks the element of danger. For the final few scenes, logic seems to
evacuate the film as all the clues and hints we’ve had building towards us are
shown to be – nothing more than red herrings and the inferences of a silly
woman. Because, after all, CARY GRANT
can’t be a murderer can he? No matter what he wants.
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