Suspicion

The aptly titled Suspicion manages to spoil the film’s ending just in its title, for this is a film about suspicion rather than actual murder. That wasn’t always the case, though. It is based on the Francis Iles novel from 1932, Before the Fact, which is a story of murder told through the eyes of the victim, concluding with her willful consumption of poison at the hands of her husband. This makes for a unique read and has an ending that remains unforgettable after nearly a hundred years.

There are two opposing opinions about why the film version was altered in the way that it was. First is that Alfred Hitchcock, the director, wrote it that way initially. However, the more common story is that the studio, RKO Radio Pictures, upon the casting of Cary Grant in the lead role, insisted the ending be altered to avoid tarnishing his screen persona, and Hitchcock complied, though he would complain about it for the rest of his life. The latter seems more likely as earlier scripts written before Hitchcock and Grant were involved more closely resemble the book. 

The new ending introduces a different element into the narrative, though, one where we aren’t convinced we know all of the truth even as the end title card comes up. As a movie audience, we have become accustomed to films spoon-feeding us the answers, even if that is reserved for the final act. We either get all the pieces shown to us or we get some form of law enforcement, Hercule Poirot, perhaps, detailing out everything we should have picked up on our own but didn’t. What we aren’t accustomed to is wondering if what was just explained to us in the final reel is just more lies like the ones we were being told so obviously throughout the rest of the film. It makes for an unnerving ending, one that elevated the film above the standard fare. Hitchcock was a master at this, and whether the film’s ending was there all along or forced on the director, it works perfectly for this story.  Without it, the story would be just another suspense film, and all the foreshadowing throughout would just reinforce what we already suspect all along. 

The story opens with Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) traveling on a train to England. There, she meets Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), a well-dressed man who is trying to sneak into her first-class car with his third-class ticket. When he is confronted by the conductor, he doesn’t have enough money to cover the difference, so he sweet-talks her into the remainder of the fare. Later, he will show up and persuade her to take a walk with him. She instantly suspects his motives but gives in anyway. When she overhears her parents discussing her lack of marriage and how they feel she will never find a man, she is hurt by this and runs into Johnnie’s arms. Shortly afterwards, he disappears from her life, reappearing more than a week later to crash the hunt ball, admitting that he tried to avoid her because he was falling in love with her. His easy, persuasive nature convinces her to elope with him, and they are quickly married. 

After the marriage, it becomes clear that Johnnie is keeping things from her. For one, he has no job and no income. Later, she will discover that he is a compulsive gambler and has lost the job he took, at her persuasion, after they got married because he was caught embezzling money. He’s been granted a reprieve from prosecution if he can come up with the money he stole but has thus far failed in the attempt. When a friend of his, Beaky (Nigel Bruce), shows up, the two men hatch a plan to start a business, but shortly after, Beaky goes to Paris to work on the arrangements, and is killed, drinking a large amount of brandy which he is allergic to, and witnesses seem to describe Johnnie as being the man who was with him at the time. On top of that, Johnnie has been making inquiries into her life insurance, and Lina begins to suspect he may be planning on killing her next. This is backed up by his sudden interest in poisons that cannot be discovered after the body has died. 

This last plot point can be a major stickler for people who are unaware of the alteration to the film’s ending. There is no valid explanation as to why Johnnie is looking for poisons that are untraceable in the body after death. He admits to Lina that he was researching ways to kill himself, but there is nothing in that explanation that says the poison needed to be untraceable. You can perhaps infer that he has life insurance on himself that would be null and void should his death be by suicide, but that is never mentioned, and nothing in the little we know about Lina’s own life insurance suggests that, either. This detail feels like a leftover element from an earlier draft of the script where Johnnie is actually trying to kill her. Of course, it could also be a clue that everything in that final scene is just more lies, and the future of these two is still uncertain. Such a red herring would be right up Hitchcock’s alley. 

Cary Grant gives an interesting performance here, looking uncomfortable for most of the picture. His character is in a near-constant state of lying to Lina and covering up his various misdeeds, so this performance does a good job of conveying that. When he is confident in his deceptions, he is smooth and convincing. But when Lina or Beaky puts him on the spot, he is quickly ill-at-ease and scrambling for any explanation to exonerate himself, usually ending up caught in an obvious lie. It’s fascinating to watch considering Cary Grant is usually so calm and collected. He is often playing variations of the same persona in most everything, and he does some of that here, too, but he is also building on that by showing us a man who is deeply unhappy with himself and struggling. 

Joan Fontaine won her Oscar for this film, the only actress to win one in an Alfred Hitchcock film. It also meant that she beat out her sister, Olivia De Havilland, who was also nominated that year. The two sisters were lifetime rivals, spurred on by a mother who heavily favored Olivia, so much so that when Joan pursued acting, she was forbidden from even using her family name. It incensed Olivia that she lost to her sister, who also beat her in being the first of the two to win an Oscar. Their relationship never improved, and when Joan passed away in 2013, her sister attempted to soften her image in the public by stating publicly that she was saddened by the passing. But she had made no effort in the years leading up to the death to mend their feud. I will address how I feel about Joan’s win over Olivia’s when I get the chance to review Olivia’s nomination for Hold Back the Dawn.

A major stumbling block for this film, however, is the sheer unlikability of the two leads. The actors are doing good work here, but the characters as written are downright bad. Johnnie, from the very first scene, is a moocher and a manipulator. He spends most of the film lying to Lani. And Lani is written to be gullible and downright dense at times. When Johnnie pawns away the two expensive chairs her family has given them for a wedding present, she believes the lies he tells her about it even though she has just been told a minute before by Beaky that that is exactly what he had done. After she first meets Johnnie, he nearly assaults her, trying to unbutton the top button on her shirt without her consent. She rightfully protests and pulls away from him. But shortly afterwards, she overhears her parents discussing her being a spinster, and suddenly she is rushing into his arms to kiss him, then calling all over the place trying to find him when he suddenly disappears. Hitchcock was known for writing women in sexist ways, and that is in full force here. 

This is a well-crafted suspense film by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. By retitling the movie to Suspicion, though, it gives away the twist at the end, especially with how obvious Cary Grant is being. Hitchcock does his best to try and convince us, though, that Johnnie is trying to kill Lina. There is one amazing shot where we see him walking upstairs carrying a glass of milk; he is entirely in silhouette, and the lighting makes the glass of milk positively glow in the dark. It is impossible to miss what Hitchcock is trying to convey here, and it’s telling that Lina never drinks the milk, leaving us unsure if it was or was not tampered with. That is the greatness of this script; we never know for sure. In the end, Johnnie convinces Lina that none of the stuff he was looking into was for her; that he was researching death as a way to kill himself, instead. We want to believe that and, because it is Cary Grant, we almost feel like we have to believe that. But when they drive off in the end and he puts his arm around her shoulder, there is just enough doubt there. After all, all we have to go off of is his word. And just how reliable has that been this whole time?

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Alfred Hitchcock

Best Actress: Joan Fontaine (won)

Best Original Score: Franz Waxman

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Release Date: November 14, 1941

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, and Dame May Whitty

Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock