For her role as Lina, Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941. This is the only Oscar-winning acting performance in an Alfred Hitchcock film. In the film, a romantically inexperienced woman marries a charming playboy after initially rejecting him. He turns out to be penniless, a gambler, and dishonest in the extreme. She comes to suspect that he is also a murderer, and that he is attempting to kill her.
Plot
In 1938, handsome, irresponsible playboy Johnnie Aysgarth meets bespectacled Lina McLaidlaw on a train in England and later persuades her to take a walk with him. She is defensive and suspects his motives; he insults her in a ploy to create familiarity. But later, at a window, she overhears her parents talking about her. They assume she will never marry, and hurt by this she kisses Johnnie.
She hopes to hear from him but he cancels their afternoon date and then vanishes. However, he returns for a hunt ball a week later and charms her into eventually eloping despite the strong disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw. After a lavish honeymoon and returning to an extravagant house, Lina discovers that Johnnie has no job and no income, habitually lives on borrowed money, and was intending to try to sponge off her father. She talks him into getting a job, and he goes to work for his cousin, estate agent Captain Melbeck.
Gradually, Lina learns that Johnnie has continued to gamble wildly, despite promising to quit, and that to pay a gambling debt, he sold two antique chairs (family heirlooms) that her father had given her as a wedding present. Beaky, Johnnie's good-natured but naive friend, tries to reassure Lina that her husband is a lot of fun and a highly entertaining liar. She repeatedly catches Johnnie in ever more significant lies, discovering that he was fired weeks before for embezzling from Melbeck, who says he will not prosecute if the money is repaid.
Lina writes a letter to Johnnie that she is leaving him but then tears it up. After this Johnnie enters the room and shows her a telegram announcing her father's death. Johnnie is severely disappointed to discover that Lina has inherited no money, only her father's portrait. He persuades Beaky to finance a hugely speculative land development scheme. Lina is afraid this is a confidence trick or worse and futilely tries to talk Beaky out of it. Johnnie overhears and angrily warns his wife to stay out of his affairs but later he calls the whole thing off.
When Beaky leaves for Paris, Johnnie accompanies him partway. Later, news reaches Lina that Beaky died in Paris. Johnnie lies to her and an investigating police inspector, saying that he (Johnnie) stayed in London. This and other details lead Lina to suspect he was responsible for Beaky's death.
Lina then begins to fear that her husband is plotting to kill her for her life insurance. He has been questioning her friend Isobel Sedbusk, a writer of mystery novels, about untraceable poisons. Johnnie brings Lina a glass of milk before bed, but she is too afraid to drink it. Needing to get away for a while, she says she will stay with her mother for a few days. Johnnie insists on driving her there. He speeds recklessly in a powerful convertible on a dangerous road beside a cliff. Lina's door unexpectedly swings open. Johnnie reaches over, his intent unclear to the terrified woman. When she shrinks from him, he stops the car.
In the subsequent confrontation, Johnnie asserts that he was actually intending to commit suicide after taking Lina to her mother's. At this time he states that he has decided that suicide is the coward's way out, and is resolved to face his responsibilities, even to the point of going to prison for the embezzlement. He reveals being in Liverpool at the time of Beaky's death, trying to borrow on Lina's life insurance policy to repay Melbeck. Her suspicions allayed, Lina asks him to go home and see it all through together. Johnnie initially refuses but eventually they turn the car round and drive away together.
Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Suspicion, he can be seen very briefly approximately 47 minutes into the film posting a letter at the village postbox.
The West-Ingster screenplay
In November 1939, Nathanael West was hired as a screenwriter by RKO Radio Pictures, where he collaborated with Boris Ingster on a film adaptation of the novel. The two men wrote the screenplay in seven weeks, with West focusing on characterization and dialogue as Ingster worked on the narrative structure.
When RKO assigned Before the Fact to Hitchcock, he already had his own, substantially different, screenplay, credited to Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville. (Harrison was Hitchcock's personal assistant, and Reville was Hitchcock's wife.) West and Ingster's screenplay was abandoned and never produced. The text of this screenplay can be found in the Library of America's edition of West's collected works.
Production
Development
Johnnie and Lina in the film.
Suspicion illustrates how a novel's plot can be so much altered in the transition to film as to reverse the author's original intention. As William L. De Andrea states in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994), Suspicion
was supposed to be the study of a murder as seen through the eyes of the eventual victim. However, because Cary Grant was to be the killer and Joan Fontaine the person killed, the studio — RKO — decreed a different ending, which Hitchcock supplied and then spent the rest of his life complaining about.[2]
Hitchcock was quoted as saying that he was forced to alter the ending of the movie.[2] He wanted an ending similar to the climax of the novel, but the studio, more concerned with Cary Grant's "heroic" image, insisted that it be changed. In his biography of Hitchcock, The Dark Side of Genius, Donald Spoto disputes Hitchcock's claim to have been overruled on the film's ending. Spoto claims that the first RKO treatment and memos between Hitchcock and the studio show that Hitchcock emphatically desired to make a film about a woman's fantasy life.[2]
As in the novel, General McLaidlaw opposes his daughter's marriage to Johnnie Aysgarth. In both versions, Johnnie freely admits that he would not mind the general's death because he expects Lina to inherit a substantial fortune, which would solve their financial problems. The book, however, is much darker, with Johnnie egging on the general to exert himself to the point where he collapses and dies. In the film, General McLaidlaw's death is only reported, and Johnnie is not involved at all. Again, Johnnie's criminal record remains incomplete.[citation needed]
Several scenes in the film create suspense and sow doubt as to Johnnie's intentions: Beaky's death in Paris is due to an allergy to brandy, which Johnnie knew about. A waiter who barely speaks English tells the police that Beaky addressed his companion that night as "Old Bean", the way Beaky addressed Johnnie. At the end of the film, Johnnie is driving his wife at breakneck speed to her mother's house. This scene, which takes place after her final illness, is not in the book.[citation needed]
The biggest difference is the ending. In Iles' novel, Johnnie serves his sick wife a drink which she knows to be poisoned, and she voluntarily gulps it down. In the film, the drink may or may not be poisoned and can be seen untouched the following morning. Another ending was considered but not used, in which Lina is writing a letter to her mother stating that she fears Johnnie is going to poison her, at which point he walks in with the milk. She finishes the letter, seals and stamps an envelope, asks Johnnie to mail the letter, then drinks the milk. The final shot would have shown him leaving the house and dropping into a mailbox the letter which incriminates him. Hitchcock's recollection of this original ending—in his book-length interview with François Truffaut, published in English as Hitchcock/Truffaut in 1967—is that Lina's letter tells her mother she knows that Johnnie is killing her, but that she loves him too much to care.[3]
A musical leitmotif is introduced in Suspicion. Whenever Lina is happy with Johnnie — starting with a ball organised by General McLaidlaw — Johann Strauss's waltz "Wiener Blut" is played in its original, light-hearted version. At one point, when she is suspicious of her husband, a threatening, minor-key version of the waltz is employed, metamorphosing into the full and happy version after the suspense has been lifted. At another, Johnnie is whistling the waltz. At yet another, while Johnnie is serving the drink of milk, a sad version of "Wiener Blut" is played again. By placing a lightbulb in the milk, the filmmakers made the contents appear to glow as the glass is carried upstairs by Johnnie, further enhancing the audience's fear that it is poisoned.
A visual threat is inserted when Lina suspects her husband of preparing to kill Beaky: On the night before, at the Aysgarths' home, they play Anagrams, and suddenly, by exchanging a letter, Lina changes "mudder" into "murder" and then "murderer." Seeing the word, Lina looks at the flyer showing the cliffs Johnnie and Beaky plan to inspect for a real estate venture the next morning. The silhouettes of two men appear in the photograph. One pushes the other over the cliff, and we see Beaky falling and screaming. Lina faints.
If the viewer accepts Johnnie's statements in the final scene and decides that he is, for all his faults, no murderer, the film becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of suspicion based only on assumed, incomplete, and circumstantial evidence. However, given his behaviour up to this point, it is not clear why Johnnie's assertions should be readily believed; in effect, the film leaves the viewer in a perpetual state of suspense as to what the truth is and what might happen next.[citation needed]
Casting
Originally, the story was intended as a B picture to star George Sanders and Anne Shirley. Then when Alfred Hitchcock became involved, the budget increased and Laurence Olivier and Frances Dee were to star. Eventually, it was decided to cast Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. Fontaine had to be borrowed from David O. Selznick for an expensive fee; she had been dropped from RKO's contract list some years before.[1] Grant and Fontaine had previously worked together in Gunga Din.
Filming
The film was shot entirely on sound stages between February 10 and July 24, 1941.[2]
Reception
Box-office
According to Variety, the film made $1.8 million at the box office in 1942.[4]Suspicion earned a profit of $440,000.[5]
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, Suspicion has a 97% approval rating based on 33 reviews, the critical consensus stating, "Not even notorious studio meddling can diminish the craft and tantalizing suspense of Suspicion, a sly showcase for Joan Fontaine's nervy prowess and Alfred Hitchcock's flair for disquiet."[6]
In 2016 the Los Angeles Times stated that "Many critics pegged “Suspicion” as a middling effort for the burgeoning auteur" with the ending being a point of contention, although Los Angeles Times reviewer Philip K. Scheuer stated in 1941 that the ending being "abrupt" resulted in it being "effective."[7]
The 2016 article stated that "Even today, most aficionados place the film well into the teens when ranking Hitchcock’s 50-plus films."[7]
During this time it was common for films to be adapted into radio plays. This film was adapted six times, from 1942 through 1949, starring the original stars and others: Once on Academy Award Theater, twice on Lux Radio Theatre and three times on Screen Guild Theater.
Lux Radio Theatre presented the initial adaptation on May 4, 1942, a one-hour version with Joan Fontaine and Nigel Bruce, and with Brian Aherne (Fontaine's husband) in Grant's part.[11]
Screen Guild Theater adapted the film in a half-hour version on January 4, 1943, with Joan Fontaine and Nigel Bruce reprising their roles, while Basil Rathbone assumed Cary Grant's part (as a last-minute substitute for an ill Brian Aherne).[12]
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
Cary Grant was an English and American actor. Known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, lighthearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing, he was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award, received an Academy Honorary Award in 1970, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. He was named the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999.
North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures".
Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell.
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was an English-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films in a career that spanned five decades. She was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland. Their rivalry was well-documented in the media at the height of Fontaine's career.
To Catch a Thief is a 1955 American romantic thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from a screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on the 1952 novel of the same name by David Dodge. The film stars Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar who has to save his reformed reputation by catching an impostor preying on wealthy tourists on the French Riviera.
Notorious is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation.
The Paradine Case is a 1947 courtroom drama with elements of film noir set in England, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick. Selznick and an uncredited Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay from an adaptation by Alma Reville and James Bridie of the 1933 novel by Robert Smythe Hichens. The film stars Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, Alida Valli, Charles Laughton, Charles Coburn, Ethel Barrymore, and Louis Jourdan. It tells of an English barrister who falls in love with a woman who is accused of murder, and how it affects his relationship with his wife.
Nathanael West was an American writer and screenwriter. He is remembered for two darkly satirical novels: Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) and The Day of the Locust (1939), set respectively in the newspaper and Hollywood film industries.
Rebecca is a 1940 American romantic psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was Hitchcock's first American project, and his first film under contract with producer David O. Selznick. The screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison, and adaptation by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, were based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a 1941 American screwball comedy film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Norman Krasna, and starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery. It also features Gene Raymond, Jack Carson, Philip Merivale, and Lucile Watson.
Saboteur is a 1942 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd.
My Favorite Wife, is a 1940 screwball comedy produced by Leo McCarey and directed by Garson Kanin.
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is a 1947 American screwball romantic comedy-drama film directed by Irving Reis and written by Sidney Sheldon. The film stars Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple in a story about a teenager's crush on an older man.
Before the Fact (1932) is an English novel by Anthony Berkeley Cox writing under the pen name "Francis Iles". It tells the story of a woman marrying a man who is after her inherited money and prepared, it seems, to kill her for it. Whether he does succeed in the end, or whether she has been imagining his plots, is left unclear. Together with the previous Iles book Malice Aforethought (1931), it can be placed in the category of psychological suspense novel. Elements of the story were used for the 1941 American film Suspicion, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Mr. Lucky is a 1943 romance film directed by H.C. Potter, starring Cary Grant and Laraine Day. It recounts the tale of an attraction between a shady gambler and a wealthy socialite in the days prior to the United States entering World War II.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) was an English director and filmmaker. Popularly known as the "Master of Suspense" for his use of innovative film techniques in thrillers, Hitchcock started his career in the British film industry as a title designer and art director for a number of silent films during the early 1920s. His directorial debut was the 1925 release The Pleasure Garden. Hitchcock followed this with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, his first commercial and critical success. It featured many of the thematic elements his films would be known for, such as an innocent man on the run. It also featured the first of his famous cameo appearances. Two years later he directed Blackmail (1929) which was his first sound film. In 1935, Hitchcock directed The 39 Steps; three years later, he directed The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.
Quality Street is a 1937 American historical comedy film made by RKO Radio Pictures. It was directed by George Stevens and produced by Pandro S. Berman. Set in 19th-century England, the film stars Katharine Hepburn and Franchot Tone. Joan Fontaine makes one of her early (uncredited) film appearances. The screenplay was by Allan Scott, Mortimer Offner, and Jack Townley, based on the 1901 play Quality Street by J. M. Barrie.
Constantin Bakaleinikoff was a Russian-American composer.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
