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Suspicion (1941)
In Alfred Hitchcock's romantic and classic suspense/thriller,
based upon the 1932 novel 'Before
the Fact' by Francis Iles, Joan Fontaine won the Best Actress Academy Award - it was the sole Oscar
win for an actor in a Hitchcock film. [Note: Some thought it was
a consolation prize for Fontaine's loss the previous year for Rebecca
(1940). In 1941, Fontaine was in Academy Award competition
with her own sister Olivia de Havilland, nominated for Hold Back
the Dawn (1941).]:
- the film ended up being puzzling, after Hitchcock
was forced to alter the film's ending following preview showings;
he had to change the film's basic themes and plot points that
the husband was guilty of plotting to murder his own wife - the
heroine. The revised film made a significant switch - it only appeared
that the husband's motives pointed to guilt and his wife was not
being targeted
- the film opened in total darkness in a train tunnel;
the film's first line was delivered by the film's male protagonist:
"Oh, I beg your pardon. Was that your leg? I had no idea we were
going into a tunnel. I thought the compartment was empty"
- the loving but shy, inexperienced, matronly and
repressed English heroine Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) was introduced
as the prim, over-protected, sheltered, spinsterish daughter of
stuffy, wealthy, retired General McLaidlaw (Cedric Hardwicke) and
his respectable wife Mrs. McLaidlaw (Dame May Whitty); once the
bespectacled wallflower Lina met handsome, suave, charming, playboyish
Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), he romanced her, and lovingly called
her "monkeyface"
- she hopelessly fell in love with him, although her
parents disapproved of Aysgarth as a scoundrel and opportunist
with a womanizing, fortune-hunting reputation;
blindly in love, and after an unusual courtship, she assented
to a request to be married, even though Lina knew very little
about him and his background
- after eloping and a whirlwind honeymoon and romance,
Johnny began to reveal his true self - he was shown to be an irresponsible
cad, a dishonest liar, and a thief; in addition, he was financially-broke
(with no employment or income); Johnnie was pressured to take
a job after he learned that Lina's monthly-income couldn't support
the two of them; he took a position with a distant, obscure cousin
Captain Melbeck (Leo G. Carroll), as an agent to help manage estates
- it was soon revealed that Johnnie had gambled
on horse-racing with the money he earned, and then pawned
off two McLaidlaw family heirlooms (antique chairs) to pay off
his racing-gambling debts
- Lina began to unearth clues and discovered
that Johnnie had criminally-embezzled 2,000
pounds from his employer and was discharged from the job, but
never told her; she began to seriously consider leaving Johnnie
and breaking up their marriage
- Lina's fears intensified when notified by telegram
that her father had died, and Johnnie was very disappointed that
Lina had not inherited his fortune
- one evening, the increasingly-suspicious and
untrusting Lina was playing anagrams with Johnnie and his jovial,
naive, past school friend and drinking buddy "Beaky" Thwaite
(Nigel Bruce); Beaky was also Johnnie's prospective business partner
for a highly-speculative land development scheme; during the game,
the word "MURDER" was formed and Lina
fell faint to the floor; she fearfully concluded that Johnnie
might be conspiring to murder his friend, as another means to restore
his finances; she had a visionary premonition that Johnnie pushed
his friend from a cliffside (a prophetic and haunting image that
would resurface)
- during conversation over dinner, juxtaposed with
the slicing and cutting of Cornish game hens, the subject of talk
was murder; Lina also remained tense due to learning about Johnnie's
obsession with reading murder mystery novels, and talking about
the use of untraceable poisons, including using brandy as a murder
weapon
- soon after, Beaky was found dead in Paris under
mysterious circumstances (he was allergic to brandy) - and Johnnie
was considered the prime suspect for murdering him, due to his
lying to authorities about his whereabouts
- Lina was driven to psychosomatic illness and became
bed-ridden due to her distrust and fear of her husband; she
fearfully learned, with mounting tension as the film progressed,
that he could benefit from her death via collecting on a payoff
from her life insurance policy
- the shadows from the skylight in the front
hall cast a giant spider-web appearing to trap Lina
- in the film's most famous and suspenseful sequence,
at bedtime, Johnnie carried a glowing glass of milk
(that may or may not have been fatefully
poisoned) upstairs to his sick wife Lina while taking care of her
- she stared at the glass with dread (and left it untouched) -
believing that she was about to be poisoned; was Johnnie truly
devious and villainous, or was it solely a conspiratorial thought
in her fragile mind?
- in the film's climactic conclusion, Johnnie insisted
on driving Lina to her mother's place; he drove recklessly on the
treacherous, twisty cliffside drive, when Lina's passenger door
unexpectedly opened up and there was a struggle as he lunged toward
her with unclear intentions - was he about to
push her from the vehicle, or to grab onto her and save her? Ultimately,
Johnnie stopped the car and helped rescue Lina; she barely escaped
death
- in the film's denouement (a studio-modified ending,
making it a disappointing and contrived finale with a happy ending),
Johnny confessed to Lina that he had chosen to end his life - he
had become interested in poisons because he was imminently planning
to commit suicide (with an untraceable poison), to escape life's
insurmountable responsibilities and the challenges he faced (charges
of embezzlement and murder); he was also resolved to spend his
life in prison; he told her that when Beaky died, he was in Liverpool,
trying to borrow money from Lina's life insurance policy to repay
his ex-employer Melbeck
- Lina apologized for her constant suspicions and
doubts, and the couple resolved to stay together, help each other,
and reconcile; however, could all of Johnnie's
assertions be trusted and believed, given his record of falsifying
the truth?
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Anagram Game: The Word 'Murder'
Spider Web Shadows Behind Lina
The Slicing Up of a Cornish Game Hen

Johnnie's Delivery of a Glowing Glass of Milk

The Film's Exciting Conclusion - An Act of Murder or Rescue
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