Cary Grant is effectively cast against type as Johnnie Aysgarth, a charming but shady playboy who sweeps prim wallflower heiress Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) off her feet in Alfred Hitchcock’s romantic thriller Suspicion (1941).
The sheltered young Lina elopes even after she’s warned that this ne’er do well is only after her money, only later to discover that he’s lied about almost everything and is content to spend her money gambling on horses and long-shot investments. Nigel Bruce (who played Watson in the classic Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone) is Grant’s old chum, who he dies under mysterious circumstances. Our nervous newlywed starts to believe that her husband is out to murder her for her fortune.
Smooth and suspenseful, it’s a handsome and elegant romantic thriller and Hitchcock creates suspense from simple sequences with ominous angles and lighting. In one memorable scene, as Grant carries a glass of milk that may contain poison up a staircase to Fontaine’s room, the room appears to grow darker and the milk literally glows (thanks to a small bulb placed in the liquid). The effect is superb.
Suspicion was Hitchcock’s third American feature and his second with Fontaine, who starred in his Oscar-winning Rebecca. Perhaps most importantly it’s his first collaboration with Cary Grant, who went on to star in three more hit movies for the director: Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest. For this film noir thriller, Hitchcock brings out darker shades than Grant had shown in movies before or after, even if he was forced to change his original ending under pressure from the studio.
Fontaine won her first and only Oscar for her performance and the film earned Academy Award nominations for best picture and for Franz Waxman’s score. Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife and often uncredited creative partner, earned rare screenwriting credit along with co-screenwriters Samson Raphaelson and Joan Harrison.
Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Dame May Whitty, Heather Angel, and Leo G. Carroll co-star.
Black and white
Also on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video and/or other services. Availability may vary by service.
Suspicion [Blu-ray]
Suspicion [DVD]
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The Blu-ray and DVD releases feature the retrospective documentary “Before the Fact: Suspicious Hitchcock.”
