The Cool Channel DVD Review: Suspicion (1941) Posted by J.D. Dunn on 10.26.2006
There have to be easier ways to score some quick cash.
Suspicion (1941)
D:Alfred Hitchcock W:Samson Raphealson, from a novel by Francis Iles Starring:Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke and Nigel Bruce. MPAA: NR Runtime: 99m.
The Film:
After a few brief diversions with the propaganda film "Foreign Correspondent" and the light, romantic comedy "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," Alfred Hitchcock returned to his roots with this story about a possibly murderous husband and a wife whose paranoia begins to get to her. But is it really paranoia?
This is also Hitchcock's first film with longtime collaborator Cary Grant and his second with Joan Fontaine ("Rebecca"). Cary Grant was the sex symbol of his day, so it was no surprise that Hitchcock should use him as a romantic lead. What is surprising is how Hitchcock would use him.
Grant plays John Aysgarth, a ne'er-do-well playboy who appears in all the scandal sheets. While on a train trip, he meets Lina McLaidlaw (Fontaine), a spinsterish, repressed young woman. While she's at first cold to him, he persists and wins her over, drawing her out of the shell she's in. It seems, even in Hitchcock's day, chicks dug the bad boy.
Despite her father's objections, Lina continues her romance with Johnny and even agrees to marry him after knowing him only a week (which consisted of two dates). Her relationship gets her excommunicated from her family, but she stays by Johnny anyway. Their honeymoon takes them to the Riviera, Monte Carlo, and Venice, all places Johnny can't afford, so he goes into debt for it.
It turns out that Johnny doesn't have a shilling to his name, but he does have extravagant tastes. He buys them a nice home, which puts him even deeper in debt. Johnny's solution to the debt: borrow more money. Lina begins to realize that she's married an irresponsible child, not a man. She becomes more of a mother to Johnny than a wife, demanding that he get a job.
What follows is a clever game of cat-and-mouse between Hitchcock and the audience as he sends us see-sawing back and forth between thinking John is trying to kill his wife for money and thinking he's just an irresponsible cad. We have hints of poisoning, tossing people off cliffs, and shoving people out of cars, but we never quite have enough proof to lean in either direction, and therein lies the fun of the film.
Sexual Symbolism
The subtext of "Suspicion" is largely sexual psychology. It starts in the very first scene in which we meet John and Lina. Over black, inside the compartment of a train going through a tunnel (already a risqué Freudian symbol), we hear a woman gasp, the sound of fumbling, and an apologetic inquiry into where someone's leg is. When the scene is illuminated, it all turns out to be very innocent, but of course, with a lot of Hitchcock there is double entendre and hidden meanings in the most unlikely of places.
The second, more devilish, use of Freudian symbolism is that of the purse. In psychoanalysis, purses often represent female genitalia, but more important than the actual physical vagina, it refers to the concept of something revered and protected. When we first meet Lina, it is obvious that she is a virgin. She rebukes the company not only of men, but of her female peer, preferring instead to bury herself in books. Johnny's arrival as a sort of Byronic hero excites her. She's drawn to his reputation as "bad boy," but she also withdraws instinctually when she feels sexual. Watch closely during the early scene in which John references her "ucipital mapillary." He leans in to kiss her, but she immediately leans away and snaps shut her purse. Hitchcock even makes sure to include an insert shot of her purse closing so that the meaning (no matter how subliminal) is not lost to us.
The Ending
Much has been made about the controversial, abrupt ending Hitchcock slapped on. Most scholars agree that Hitchcock was "influenced" to create an ending that wouldn't show Cary Grant as a bluebeard killer, potentially hurting his long-term career as a leading man. Hollywood lore says that the original ending saw Johnny poison his wife but with a twist. She anticipated him poisoning her, but by that time, she had lost the will to live anyway and wrote a sort of suicide note. When he delivered the poison (in the legendary backlit glass of milk), she asked him to mail a sealed letter — a letter that would incriminate him in her murder.
There are several problems with that ending, even excepting the danger to Grant's image as a romantic lead. At this point, Hollywood was still steeped deep in the Hays Code, which restricted potential morally questionable actions. If Lina had allowed herself to be poisoned, that's as good as committing suicide. Because the Hays Code was heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, suicide was one of the major no-no's. Also, Lina would likely have lost the sympathy of much of the audience had she just given in.
Film critic and Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto offers a competing theory backed up by "careful research," in which he states that the ending was Hitchcock's idea all along. Although Spoto never actually cites his "careful research," it's not entirely without merit. After all, if one looks at the ending of North by Northwest, you can see that same wink from the director to the audience as if to say, "Look, we all know what's going to happen here. I'm not going to bother you with a clichéd finish."
Still, I tend to side with the former theorists that Hitchcock was pressured to change the finish.
DVD Extras
Before the Fact - A new making-of documentary backing up the theory of the original ending.
Theatrical trailer
The 411: Suspicion is, by no means, a flawless thriller. It is, essentially, the same premise repeated over and over for an hour. What works, though, is Hitchcock's spellbinding way of manipulating us to one side or another. For every situation Hitchcock sets up that spells out (quite literally in one scene) that Johnny is a murderer, there is another scene in which we see a perfectly logical explanation for his actions. It doesn't hold up to the repeated viewings of some of Hitchcock's masterworks, but it is head and shoulders above the routine thrillers Hollywood was churning out around the same time. B+
