Review of Suspicion (1941) by Edith N — 16 Aug 2007

I cannot understand why Joan Fontaine won an Oscar--the only performance Hitch ever directed to an Oscar--for this movie. And it's the one that meant she'd beat her sister to an Oscar, too. It's not that challenging a role. All she really has to do is look horrified a lot.

In order to properly discuss this, I'm afraid I'm going to have to get into spoiler territory, which I hate to do with Hitchcock films, but there we are. So consider yourself warned.

Joan Fontaine is a spinster who marries a rake. That's the best summary I can really provide. He's a gambler and a liar and a cad, and she's a well-bred bookworm. And they get married largely because she's overheard a belief that she'll never marry anyone. Slowly, steadily, she begins to believe that Cary Grant is going to kill her.

And apparently, in the book, she's right. In the book, he kills her. In the movie . . . well, no one believed Cary Grant would do it.

The problem is, we're left with an unbearable position. He's still a gambler and a liar and a cad, and she's still a well-bred bookworm, and he owes thousands of pounds in a time when that was a [i]lot[/i] more than it is now. Her 500 pounds a year is a very comfortable living, but it's not enough to cover their standards of living, far less their--his--debts. It's useless. He can't hold a job; it isn't in his nature even if he could find one. They don't even consider that she might get one instead. And I really doubt her mother will increase her allowance. So what do you do?

I enjoyed this film, but perhaps not in the way I was intended to; I would have preferred the original ending, I think. Watching Joan Fontaine move from innocence to death is much more interesting than watching her move from innocence to forced naivete.