Richard Schickel:
What is significant about Suspicion is that, for the first time, one really feels the dangerousness of a charm as seductive as [Cary] Grant’s. It was perhaps hinted at in Sylvia Scarlett, but the world of that film was so remote, and his character so exotic, that it did not menace as it does here, where Fontaine (who is very good and vulnerable) makes us feel its sexy lure, its ability, helplessly, to enthrall.
I’m glad you’re posting about Suspicion, Sheila, because I think it’s an underrated film. It’s not supposed to be one of Hitchcock’s best, the ending is muddled, yet it’s one of those I can watch over and over again without ever tiring of it. I note that the lead screenwriter is listed as Samson Raphaelson, who worked on many of the great Lubitsch films, including the sublime Trouble in Paradise. A master of the comedy of manners was what was needed to convey the peculiar sinister charm of Grant in that film that Schickel alludes to. I think the contribution of the writers to Hitchcock’s films have been underestimated. He always looked for the best he could find to work with.
Phil – I have the same experience you have with this troubled film. The ending just doesn’t work, and you can feel the gears creaking – but other than that, it’s a fascinating portrait of obsession, envy, and terror. I like your thoughts on Hitchcock and his writers.
I find this movie especially fascinating because of the giant leap of faith Cary Grant took in accepting that part. No dummy, Grant, but he was a cautious man – he chose carefully – and his screwball juggernaut was about to come to an end, and who knows if he sensed the shifting of the tides, or if Hitchcock gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse – but seeing Grant play this shifty kind of lightweight guy … It seems like a done deal now, in retrospect, that Hitchcock and Grant would make a great team, but back in the day, that wasn’t the case at all. Grant’s persona up until that time was set – he had been applauded for it, celebrated – And here, it’s not like he was just taking a dramatic part, where he got to show “other sides” – like he did in Penny Serenade, where he got to be a father, a middle-class guy, he got to cry … But still: in Penny Serenade, he was still a “winner”. He is a leading man, you automatically root for him. So to see him in Suspicion – WITHOUT that cushion (boy, Hitchcock loved to take away Grant’s trappings and confidence, didn’t he) – is FASCINATING. Do we like him? Of course we do, he’s Cary Grant! But then … slowly … we’re not so sure …
I think it took a great act of courage on Grant’s part to go with it. Hitchcock certainly knew what he was doing, and had great things planned for Grant – Suspicion being his first stab at it. But if you think of the mildly unsavory guy Grant plays in Suspicion, and how you never can quite shake the thought that there is something off about that guy …
So many movie stars never want to give the audience a chance to doubt them. They build their careers around such a thing, and protecting that persona.
Grant was willing to mess with it. He didn’t let just ANYONE mess with it, but he let Hitchcock – and, for me, the result, in Suspicion, is really unbalancing and awesome. it creates such a great tension, because of our associations with Grant.
“Suspicion” is not one I’ve seen but sounds interesting to see Grant as somebody dangerous. He was kind of harsh in “Notorious” (later than this film, right?). Of course, there you had to watch out for the coffee, not the milk.
Notorious came after Suspicion, yes, and there, they got it right. He is much much darker in Notorious than he is in Suspicion. In Suspicion he is impulsive and sort of flighty, with a dark underbelly. You never can quite shake the thought that he doesn’t love her, that he’s in this for the money. In Notorious, he is a damaged individual (although we never know why, I assume women) – and that has made him cruel and manipulative, willing to throw the woman he loves to the wolves, just so he can prove to her that he is right, that she is a bad dame. I consider his Devlin in Notorious to be his riskiest role ever. He is completely unlikeable, and openly cruel. Tight, damaged, contemptuous. In the last scene, when he admits, “I was a fat-headed guy full of pain …” My God, what he reveals in that moment. So Suspicion sometimes feels like a dress rehearsal for what they were able to do in Notorious. Joan Fontaine won an Oscar for her role in Suspicion, as the suspicious wife. Tormented by the fantasy that her husband (Grant) is a murderer.
Hitchcock put a little lightbulb in the glass of milk in the scene where Grant walks up the stairs in Suspicion – so that the milk seems to glow from within in an ominous manner.
Good flick. Bad ending, imposed on him by the studios – but up until then, good stuff.
He also has this great and weird line in it: “Your ucipital mapilary is quite beautiful.”
Not the intercostal clavicle, mind you, but the ucipital mapilary.
Intercostal clavicle – nice BUB reference , Sheila. :) I imagine you already know this lovely tidbit, but I thought I’d put it up here – Screenwriter Samson Raphaelson invented the term “ucipital mapilary” to refer to the suprasternal notch for the 1941 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Suspicion.