Suspicion (1941 film)

Suspicion
File:Suspicion film poster.jpg Original movie poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Written by	Novel: Anthony Berkeley (as Francis Iles) Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson Joan Harrison Alma Reville
Produced by	Uncredited: Alfred Hitchcock Harry E. Edington
Starring	Joan Fontaine Cary Grant Sir Cedric Hardwicke Nigel Bruce Dame May Whitty
Cinematography	Harry Stradling Sr.
Edited by	William Hamilton
Music by	Franz Waxman
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date	November 14, 1941
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,103,000
Box office	US$ 4,500,000

Suspicion (1941) is a romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also stars Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, and Leo G. Carroll.

Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

It is based on Francis Iles's 1932 novel Before the Fact.

Plot

Handsome, irresponsible cad Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) sweeps dowdy Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) off her feet and charms her into running away and marrying him, despite the strong disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). After their honeymoon, they set up housekeeping in extravagant fashion, though she soon learns that Johnnie is broke and was hoping to live off her father's generosity. She persuades him to get a job and he goes to work for his cousin, estate agent Captain Melbeck (Leo G. Carroll).

Gradually, Lina learns that Johnnie has continued to gamble on the horses, despite his promise to quit, and that he has sold family heirloom chairs given to them as a wedding present to help pay for things. She repeatedly catches him in lies and discovers that he has been caught embezzling and fired from his job, though Melbeck assures her he will not prosecute if the money is repaid. Johnnie's good-natured, if scatterbrained, friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) tries to reassure her that her husband is a good sort, but without much success.

When the general dies, Johnnie is severely disappointed to find that he has left Lina only his portrait — which is later seen in some infrequently-used living room. He convinces Beaky to finance his next venture, a land development, even though neither of them knows much about the business. Lina tries to talk Beaky out of it, but he trusts his friend completely. Johnnie overhears and warns his wife to stay out of his affairs, but later calls the whole thing off. When Beaky leaves for Paris, Johnnie accompanies him partway. Later, news reaches Lina of Beaky's death in Paris. Johnnie misleads her and an investigating police inspector about remaining in London. This and other details lead Lina to suspect he caused his friend's demise.

She begins to fear that her husband is plotting to kill her for her life insurance. He has been questioning her friend Isobel Sedbusk (Auriol Lee), 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 makes up a story to stay with her mother for a few days. Johnnie insists on driving her there. He speeds recklessly in a powerful convertible (a 1936 Lagonda LG45) on a dangerous road beside a cliff. Suddenly, Lina's door opens. Johnnie reaches for her, his intent unclear to the terrified woman. When she shrinks from him, he stops the car.

In the subsequent row, it emerges that Johnnie was actually intending to kill himself. Now however, he has decided that suicide is the coward's way out and is resolved to face his responsibilities and even go to jail for the embezzlement. He was actually in Liverpool at the time of Beaky's death, seeking to borrow on Lina’s life insurance policy to settle matters with Melbeck. Her suspicions allayed, Lina tells him that they will face the future together.

Cast

Joan Fontaine and Gary Cooper holding their Oscars at Academy Awards, 1942. Fontaine won Best Actress for her role in Suspicion.

Actor	Role
Joan Fontaine	Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth
Cary Grant	Johnnie Aysgarth
Sir Cedric Hardwicke	General McLaidlaw
Nigel Bruce	Gordon Cochrane 'Beaky' Thwaite
Dame May Whitty	Mrs. Martha McLaidlaw
Isabel Jeans	Mrs. Newsham
Heather Angel	Ethel (Maid)
Auriol Lee	Isobel Sedbusk
Reginald Sheffield	Reggie Wetherby
Leo G. Carroll	Captain George Melbeck
Alec Craig	Hogarth Club Desk Clerk
David Clyde	Trunk man

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In Suspicion he can be seen (45 minutes into the film) mailing a letter at the village postbox; also earlier in the film at the equestrian gathering, pulling a horse in front the camera right before Cary Grant is reintroduced, though this has not been confirmed.

Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. This was the only Academy Award-winning performance under Hitchcock's direction.

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

Johnnie and Lina in the film.

In places, the screenplay of Suspicion faithfully follows the plot of the novel. There are, however, a number of major differences between the novel and its film version. For example, all references to Johnnie Aysgarth's infidelity were removed. In the first days of Johnnie's "courtship," while the couple are driving through the countryside in Lina's car ("Have you ever been kissed in a car?"), she asks him how many women he has had and he gives a humorous rather than really evasive answer: saying that he had so many that he once counted them like sheep to get to sleep. (Even back in the early 1940s, however, this was accepted, or at least tolerated, male behaviour, especially of a man who was considered a playboy. Much is left open for the cinema-goer to decide: Did he actually sleep with any, some, or all of them? Or did he only kiss them?) The crime of adultery, on the other hand, is altogether left out in the film plot: Lina's best friend doesn't appear at all, and Ella, their maid, certainly doesn't have an illegitimate son by Johnnie. Sex is not made an issue.

Suspicion is one of the famous examples where, in the process of rewriting the novel for the big screen, the plot was tampered with to an extent that Iles's original intention was completely reversed. 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."

Hitchcock was quoted as saying that he was forced to alter the ending of the movie. 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. Writer Donald Spoto, in his biography of Hitchcock The Dark Side of Genius, 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.

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 quite a substantial fortune, which would solve their (i.e. his) 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.

There are several scenes in the film which create suspense and sow doubt as to Johnnie's intentions: Beaky's death in Paris was due to an allergy to brandy which Johnnie knew about and a waiter, who barely knows English, gives the police names that sound like "Old Bean", the way Beaky would call Johnnie. At the end of the film, Johnnie is driving his wife at breakneck speed to her mother's. This scene, which takes place after her (final) illness, is not in the book. The biggest difference is the ending. In Iles' novel, Johnnie serves his sick wife a drink which she knows is poisoned. Nevertheless she gulps it down. In the film, it can be seen untouched the following morning. (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.)

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.

A musical leitmotif is introduced in Suspicion. Whenever Lina is happy with Johnny — 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, Johnny is whistling the waltz. At yet another, while Johnny is serving the drink of milk, a sad version of "Wiener Blut" is played again.

A visual threat is inserted when Lina suspects her husband of preparing to kill Beaky Thwaite: On the night before, at the Aysgarths' home, they play anagrams, and suddenly, by exchanging a letter, Lina has changed "mudder" into "murder". Seeing the word, Lina imagines the cliffs Johnny and Beaky told her they will inspect for a real estate venture the next morning, and faints.

In the end, when it turns out that, for all his faults, Johnny is no murderer, the film version becomes a cautionary tale in its own right about the dangers of groundless suspicion based only on assumed, incomplete, and circumstantial evidence.

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, when she had been dropped by RKO's contract list a number of years before.

Reception

Box office

Suspicion earned a profit of $440,000.

Accolades

The film was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as Best Original Score, and Joan Fontaine won for Best Actress. She also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. The film later won the 1948 Kinema Junpo Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Adaptations

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 Theater and three times on Screen Guild Theater.

Lux Radio Theater presented the initial adaptation on May 4, 1942 with Joan Fontaine, Nigel Bruce, and Brian Aherne in Grant's part. Screen Guild Theater adapted the film on January 4, 1943 with Joan Fontaine and Nigel Bruce reprising their roles while Basil Rathbone assumed Cary Grant's part. Lux aired a remake on October 18, 1944, starring Olivia de Havilland, William Powell, and Charles W. Irwin. A few years later, on January 21, 1946, Screen Guild Theater remade it with Cary Grant and Nigel Bruce reprising their parts with Loretta Young.

CBS Radio aired an adaptation on October 30, 1946, with Cary Grant and Ann Todd on Academy Award Theater. On November 24, 1949, Screen Guild Theater remade it a third time, featuring all three of the original film stars, Grant, Fontaine, and Bruce.

The 1988 American Playhouse remake stars Anthony Andrews and Jane Curtin.

External links

• Suspicion at IMDb
• Suspicion at Rotten Tomatoes
• Suspicion at AllMovie
• Suspicion at the TCM Movie Database
• Suspicion Eyegate Gallery
• Historic reviews, photo gallery at CaryGrant.net

Streaming audio

• Suspicion on Lux Radio Theater: May 4, 1942
• Suspicion on Lux Radio Theater: September 18, 1944
• Suspicion on Theater of Romance: July 17, 1945
• Suspicion on Academy Award Theater: October 30, 1946