Suspicion (1941)

Hitchcock’s precursor to In A Lonely Place (1950) is a lighter, more romantic, less devastating affair, at least if the audience ends the film sharing the heroine's frame of mind and emotional state… Life still ain’t gonna be easy for these two even if he isn't a murderer! (You'd also have to believe Grant is telling the truth in his concluding explanation.)

As playboy Johnnie Aysgarth, Cary Grant starts the movie in his, well established, romantic lead persona (he calls her Monkey Face; he playfully lies to her only to reveal the truth immediately after; he admits that the truth is the way to get results from her; her remembers her hat, and alternatively praises it only to criticize it later,) it is only when he’s caught again and again lying (or concealing information, then lying) to his wife that the layers begin to peel off to reveal a much darker core.

The after-the-fact claim that there was studio interference (supposedly to protect Cary Grant’s romance friendly image) may or may not be believed: ultimately the result is pretty much what Hitchcock would have wanted to achieve – it’s basically what he does all thru the film!

Are we to think that after emotionally jerking us back and forth he would want us to leave out theater seat with certainty of one thing or another?

We feel bad about some antique chairs only to be told that he’s bought them back, then that he’s stolen the money to buy the chairs back, etc. etc. etc. That’s the film in a nut shell!

The problem with this is that Grant is so charming we must believe what he says, it all makes perfect sense when he explains it, doesn’t it?

Maybe not. Every time I screen the film, I come away less and less convinced of Grant’s innocence.

The film has all sorts of little (surreal) directorial flourishes: a snapped shut purse may be an indication that a character (Joan Fontaine) is guarding her wealth from con man Grant (hadn’t she already been manipulated/tricked into paying for his first-class train ticket?) but it also might as well be a Freudian symbol that she is closing shut her uterine space.

Add to that glowing, poisoned milk; very Noirish shadow nets, etc.

There is also the fantasy vision of grant murdering his buddy (Nigel Bruce) but it’s only in Fontaine’s imagination that it happens. The description of Bruce’s eventual death doesn’t really make sense (he did something, on a bet, which he knew would inevitably cause his death?)

In Spellbound Hitchcock had used the less subtly surreal visual of doors opening.

A difficult to miss, but also difficult to interpret, funny little detail I’ve mentioned before is an abstract painting a couple of cops keep glancing at which Peter Conrad (The Hitchcock Murders) interprets to mean a prejudice against (degenerate) abstraction.

That’s at least one explanation even when it can’t possibly be obvious to more contemporary audiences now quite familiar (at least more than Hitchcock was) with abstract art.

A classic and the only Award-winning performance in Hitchcock film.