Well-to-do wallflower Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) is in love, perhaps in danger.  She suspects that Johnny Aysgarth (Cary Grant), the playboy who swept into her life and married her, is a murderer – and that she is his next intended victim.

CRITIQUE

Suspicion is an interesting film in the Hitchcock catalog.  The way the characters meet – completely at random – is vintage Hitch.  One of them, Johnny, is more open, more experienced, while the Lina is more repressed.  Their meeting, in a train, and the dynamic between the two characters is similar to Strangers on a Train, though that film was a more fully realized vision.  Cary Grant, in his first of four collaborations with Hitchcock, plays Johnny as a cad, a huckster, but he is one we can accept.  He is a master manipulator, a quick witted bullshit artist who plays Lina from the moment they meet.  He has Lina so sold on him that he is able to talk himself out of the lie after lie that she catches him in.

Hitchcock handles the material with the deft touch he brought to all of his films.  The story is told from Lina’s point of view, so we only know as much about Johnny as she does.  Pieces of his character are revealed as she learns them.  This builds the film’s suspenseful ebb and flow.  We suspect that Johnny is a murderer, but we do not know for sure, and every time the suspense reaches a high point, as though we are find out the truth about this hustler once and for all, Hitchcock pulls the rug out from under us, and we are left, like Lina, not knowing what to think.  The film does not have the dazzling set pieces that Hitchcock does so well.  There is the glowing glass of milk that Johnny serves to Lina, which she is afraid might be poisoned.  Hitchcock also has a scene that would show op over and over in his work (see Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, and others).  The characters sit around the dinner table, casually talking about murder as if it were some sort of joke.  Hitchcock treats these people with contempt, not one of them realizing how close they are to an actual murderer.

The film’s ending is problematic, and that is where everything falls apart.  Hitchcock spends the film building Lina’s paranoia, as she becomes more and more convinced that her husband is planning her death.  The whole film is geared so that we suspect Johnny to be a killer the whole time, just waiting for the big reveal… and then it never comes.  Hitchcock planned the film out so that Johnny would be a murderer, then, thanks to studio meddling, the ending was changed.  Audiences would never accept Cary Grant as a killer, they said.  So with the ending we have, it seems as though the whole film turns on a dime in the last few minutes.  Lina realizes that it was all a big misunderstanding and they drive off together, a happy couple.  This does not fit with the rest of the film.  It is in this way that Suspicion fails.  Problems of this kind would not plague Hitchcock often, but in instances like this, it is painfully obvious that there is another hand in the mix.  Even on a bad day, Hitchcock is still better than most.

THE VIDEO

Suspicion is presented in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  The picture has been nicely cleaned up, and the beautifully stark black and white photography has been well translated.

THE AUDIO

This DVD is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.  The presentation is crisp, with all the effects coming through clearly.

THE EXTRAS

Before the fact: Suspicious Hitchcock: details the film from inception to release.  Discussed are several of the film’s key scenes and Hitchcock’s troubles with the Hays Code (the precursor to the MPAA), as well as his original intent for the film’s ending.

Theatrical trailer: the original trailer.  The picture and sound is of notably low quality here, probably because the original negative has not been well preserved.  It is all the more notable because of all the trailers presented in this collection, the quality of this one is by far the worst. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

An interesting film up until the end, with great performances by all involved.  The new featurette gives some interesting details into the making of the film.  Hitchcock made more than 50 films over the course of his career, and they can’t all be masterpieces.  Suspicion is by no means bad, but it does not live up to its promise.