Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Micransix Crappy film

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

adrian-43767 SUSPICION is exceptionally well directed and photographed, a visually beautiful film, and the acting by the two main leads is of superior quality. I have never seen better from Cary Grant, and Joan Fontaine received her Oscar for this performance (although I preferred her in REBECCA). The supporting cast is also very good.Where things come unstuck is with the script. Aysgarth (Grant) is clearly a thief, a liar, and possibly a murderer, but wife Fontaine is too blinded by her love to see it. I readily accept that love can blind you, but with so much evidence - especially after the sale of her father's much prized chairs - I would have thought that any self- respecting woman would have given him the boot, not least because he does not have a cent to his name.Instead, Mrs Aysgarth recurrently forgives her sinful hubby and, in the process, loses the spectator's respect. The final blow is the studio-dictated ending that basically tells you the rest of the movie is a fib. Pity, Hitch would have deserved better. The greater our loss, too. 7.5 would be my mark, but I can't honestly round it up to 8, so I'm giving it 7.

l_rawjalaurence Dismissed by critics as "minor" Hitchcock, SUSPICION nonetheless has plenty to recommend it.Set in a chocolate-box English village reconstructed on the RKO back-lot, full of green fields, mock-Tudor housing, hunting scenes and over-stuffed interiors, the film contrasts the stultifying respectability of spinster Lina's (Joan Fontaine's) life with the prospects offered by chancer Johnnie (Cary Grant).Lina lives in a village world where church-going and hunt balls are the highlights of daily life. Her parents (Dame May Witty and Sir Cedric Hardwicke) spend their days in their comfortable living-room, either embroidering or reading the paper. They have no need for excitement: General McLaidlaw (Hardwicke) has enjoyed a distinguished military career and has now retired. By contrast Johnnie, although reluctant to work, as well as being a habitual liar with a penchant for betting, has that indefinable quality called charm (what else would he be, when played by Grant?) Lina understands what a worthless person he is, but cannot detach herself from him. As Johnnie's friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) tell her, he can be excused anything.The only suggestion that something might be amiss is communicated through lighting. The two protagonists are perpetually photographed with bars - window-bars, blinds, stairwells being three example - either across their bodies or at the back of the frame, suggesting imprisonment. This is both physical as well as emotional: neither Johnnie nor Lina can be honest with one another. As a result Lina continually suspects her husband's motives.There are continual echoes of REBECCA, filmed in the previous year - not only with the presence of Fontaine in the case, but also with the use of stock footage taken on the coast from the cliffs looking down at the sea crashing below. The final sequence, where Johnnie drives his sports car at breakneck speed, putting both his own and his spouse's safety at risk, recalls a similar moment in the earlier film. The endings of the two films are different, but the intertexts remain.There is one memorable sequence towards the film's end, drawing attention to Hitchcock's penchant for the macabre. As Johnnie is abound to climb the stairs, he is photographed in shadow, picked out against a tight column of bright light. Just what his motives are, we know not; but the visual effect is stunning.

SnoopyStyle Playboy Johnny Aysgarth (Cary Grant) meets quiet Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) on a train. He flirts with her and she eventually lets down her guard. They run away to get marry despite her disapproving father. She starts to discover his true nature afterward. He's a jobless, penniless gambler. He goes to work for his cousin Captain Melbeck after she insists on him getting a job. Johnny's friend Beaky (Nigel Bruce) tells her that he is still a lovable gambler. He got fired for embezzling his cousin and he has sold the family heirloom chairs. Lina's father dies and Johnny is annoyed that Lina gets nothing of value. Johnny talks the gullible Beaky into investing in a scheme. Lina tries to talk Beaky out of it. Later Beaky is dead. Lina has suspicion that Johnny may have killed him and trying to kill her for the insurance money.Cary Grant is so charming that it's no problem to believe Joan Fontaine would fall for him completely. The trick by Hitchcock is throw every doubt on the man. Everything he's ever done is a clue. Did he even purchase the first class ticket in the first place or was he stalking her? Hitchcock makes it easy to believe that he could actually kill. Grant is so charming that every lie is unnerving. Fontaine is reflecting every fear that Hitchcock lays out for the audience.

atlasmb In "Suspicion", Hitchcock takes the audience on a ride. The story starts by mixing two seemingly incompatible people--Cary Grant as Johnnie and Joan Fontaine as Lina--and making them a couple. She is a studious, introspective, conservative woman and he is an impetuous, impertinent, immature extrovert. Their joining is the recipe for some kind of discord.Lina is the viewer's avatar in the film. Notice how the story follows her point of view. Much of the circumstantial evidence that points to Johnnie's guilt is viewed through her eyes, conveyed through her external clues to inner turmoil in a great performance by Fontaine. Note the way Hitchcock lights the interior of their home--usually with a multitude of shadows. He frames Lina with the shadows of the large window, a cage, making her a prisoner of her own love for Johnnie.The dream of happiness that was the center of their honeymoon becomes a nightmarish roller coaster ride of emotions as soon as they return home. Lina is an amateur regarding relationships, so it takes her a while to understand her feelings and to learn what limits her fidelity has.As the evidence--circumstantial and otherwise--piles up (perhaps a little too neatly), Hitchcock asks the viewer to understand Lina's confusion and her ambivalence. But it is human nature to want to exhaust every last shred of doubt in defending one's love, so we take the journey with Lina until finally there is only certainty. The script is very tight and cleverly written and the score is lush, accenting the emotional highs.Hitchcock wanted a darker ending, but still managed to create an ending that delights in having taken the audience for a ride. He would get his darker ending two years later, with "Shadow of a Doubt". In both cases, note how he uses a waltz theme for the one under suspicion.I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is filled with prototypical Hitchcockian elements (e.g. his focus on her hair). Joan Fontaine's performance alone--so nuanced, especially when compared to some other portrayals of women spiraling toward a breakdown--makes the film worth watching.