Suspicion: Ideas, Facts, Motifs, Oddities, Curio Items–What you Need to Know
Suspicion was Hitchcock’s fourth American film, following Rebecca, his debut, which won the Bets Picture Oscar of 1940, Foreign Correspondent, which was also nominated for Best Picture in the same year, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
| Suspicion | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
Theatrical release poster by William Rose
|
|
Gender and Character
Joan Fontaine, who won the Best Actress Oscar for this film, plays Lina
We learn that Nina married against the wish of her father, General McLaidlaw (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), a domineering patriarch.
As a result, the only thing he bequeath to her is his vast portrait, which guarantees his presence (and impact on) in her life long after his death.
The portrait, in fact, moves, when Johnnie stares and talks to him, suggesting that the father is ever watching and not quite dead!
Lina is essentially a passive, even inert women, whose main activity is to watch, though she observes events without actually seeing (their nature, their meanings).
Lina’s female gaze is full of fears, worries, anxieties, and suspicions, about which she does nothing. Toward the end, she gathers some power and asks Johnny some questions, but immediately accepting his answers (all excuses for his mal behavior).
As viewers, we are intrigued by watching Lina watching Johnnie, hoping that she would be moved to real action upon a series of discoveries.
During the course of the story, Lina is confronted with all kinds of opaque and ambiguous traces; she is always waiting for the worst about Johnnie, but sort of silently, passively.
Richard Allen has observed that Johnnie materializes in Lina’s presence in a manner that’s less suggestive of humanity and more of supernatural or demonic presence, in some cases like a predatory vampire.
Visually, the actor steps into the frame, often suddenly (out of nowhere), in close proximity to Lina, with his back toward the camera (audience).
Opposites Attract
In contrast, Johnnie Aysgarth, played with bravura by Cary Grant, is always full of ideas, blessed by boundless dynamic energy, ad ready to embrace the next (irresponsible) adventure.
Unlike pother Hitchcock’s heroes and heroines, Lina, at least initially has two parents. Most characters in Hitchcock’s films have a single parent.
Lina’s mother (May Whitty) is also passive; she is often seen doing needle work.
Genre:
Suspicion is labeled as a crime movie, but there is no murder in sight, at least not technically.
One figures that the father needs to be killed (through his portrait)
The only character who dies is
Thus, the film is ultimately effective as a dissection of one bourgeois (and asymmetrical) marriage.
Resolution
I have commented elsewhere about the “happy ending,” imposed on Hitchcock, in order to reaffirm the dominance of the couple and their marriage.
It is meant to reestablish sense and renewed stability by “dissipating” Lina’s previously held suspicions.
It’s no doubt a compromised, unrefined, unsatisfying resolution, patched up at the very last moment, But it is still one that is less simple than it appears, truly ambiguous, raising questions about the welfare and happiness (potential and real) in the future.
Intertextualiy: Recurrent Motifs and Images
Lina is often shot from the back, with the camera zeroing on her hair, just like Kim Novak would be shot in Vertigo and Tippi Hedren in The Birds.
Newspaper:
When Lima reads in a newspaper about the mysterious death of a man in Paris, she thinks that Johnny had killed him.
The adjacent headline with horse imagery is a racing tip: “Old Melody is my nap selection.”
It points to the romantic waltz, which happens when he couple dances, in public and private.
It may also refers to the final attempt of poisoning, where a galss of milk is regarded as a sleeping draught. (Spoto, p. 123).
Hitchcock would use adjacent news items in “The Paradine Case” and “North by Northwest,” among others.
Cast
Cary Grant as Johnnie Aysgarth
Joan Fontaine as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth
Nigel Bruce as Gordon Cochrane ‘Beaky’ Thwaite
Sir Cedric Hardwicke as General McLaidlaw
Dame May Whitty as Mrs. Martha McLaidlaw
Isabel Jeans as Mrs. Helen Newsham, Johnnie’s friend
Heather Angel as Ethel, Aysgarth’s Maid
Auriol Lee as Isobel Sedbusk, writer and Aysgarth’s friend
Reginald Sheffield as Reggie Wetherby, Lina’s dancing partner
Leo G. Carroll as Captain George Melbeck, Johnnie’s employer and cousin
Credits:
Produced, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, Based on Before the Fact, 1932 novel by Francis Iles
Produced by Hitchcock, Harry E. Edington
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
Budget $1,103,000
Box office US$ 4.5 million
