Suspicion
starring: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce
directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
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Product Description:
In Suspicion wealthy sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne'er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune hunter Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to another. Gradually Fontaine comes to the conclusion that Grant intends to do away with her in order to collect her inheritance...a suspicion confirmed when Grant's likeable business partner Nigel Bruce dies under mysterious circumstances. Suspicion's stylish chills put Hitchcock on the top of the Hollywood heap...and keep audiences on the edges of their seats to this day. So hang on for all-out suspense that's all-out Hitchcock! Year: 1941Running Time: 99 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 053939658323
Amazon.com:
Repeated viewings can't dispel the shock of the final scene in this classic 1941 romantic mystery--a brief but disorienting confrontation that suddenly inverts the heroine's mounting conviction that she's married a murderer, forcing us to reconsider virtually every scene and line of dialogue that's preceded it. It's a masterful coup de grace for director Alfred Hitchcock, who has built a puzzle around the corrosive power of suspicion, threaded with deft ambiguities that toy with dramatic conventions and character archetypes in nearly every frame.
As embodied by Joan Fontaine, who nabbed an Oscar in this second outing with the director, Lina McLaidlaw is a buttoned-up, bookish heiress whose prim exterior conceals longings for a more engaged emotional life. Her solution materializes in the darkly handsome Johnnie Aysgarth, a gambler, womanizer, and spendthrift who flirts, then pursues, and soon marries her. As Aysgarth, Cary Grant is both irresistible and sinister, capable of deceit and petty theft, as well as grander designs on his bride's impending fortune. Lina's passion for Johnnie is clouded by each new revelation about his apparent dishonesty, from clandestine gambling to real estate development schemes; more troubling are clues implicating him in the death of his best friend, and the prospect that Johnnie may be slowly poisoning Lina herself. By the time we see him ascending a darkened staircase with a suspicious glass of milk, an image made all the more indelible through the spectral glow the director captures in the glass, the evidence seems damning indeed.
In fact, even as Hitchcock stacks the deck against Johnnie, and takes full advantage of Grant's skill at conveying such menace, the director also dots his landscape with visual clues to Lina's own neurotic (and erotic) obsessions. The final scene forces us to reevaluate her behavior while leaving enough of a cloud over Johnnie to rob him, and us, of a complete exoneration. It's a wicked, unsettling payoff to a brilliantly executed thriller. --Sam Sutherland
In Suspicion wealthy sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne'er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune hunter Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to another. Gradually Fontaine comes to the conclusion that Grant intends to do away with her in order to collect her inheritance...a suspicion confirmed when Grant's likeable business partner Nigel Bruce dies under mysterious circumstances. Suspicion's stylish chills put Hitchcock on the top of the Hollywood heap...and keep audiences on the edges of their seats to this day. So hang on for all-out suspense that's all-out Hitchcock! Year: 1941Running Time: 99 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 053939658323
Amazon.com:
Repeated viewings can't dispel the shock of the final scene in this classic 1941 romantic mystery--a brief but disorienting confrontation that suddenly inverts the heroine's mounting conviction that she's married a murderer, forcing us to reconsider virtually every scene and line of dialogue that's preceded it. It's a masterful coup de grace for director Alfred Hitchcock, who has built a puzzle around the corrosive power of suspicion, threaded with deft ambiguities that toy with dramatic conventions and character archetypes in nearly every frame.
As embodied by Joan Fontaine, who nabbed an Oscar in this second outing with the director, Lina McLaidlaw is a buttoned-up, bookish heiress whose prim exterior conceals longings for a more engaged emotional life. Her solution materializes in the darkly handsome Johnnie Aysgarth, a gambler, womanizer, and spendthrift who flirts, then pursues, and soon marries her. As Aysgarth, Cary Grant is both irresistible and sinister, capable of deceit and petty theft, as well as grander designs on his bride's impending fortune. Lina's passion for Johnnie is clouded by each new revelation about his apparent dishonesty, from clandestine gambling to real estate development schemes; more troubling are clues implicating him in the death of his best friend, and the prospect that Johnnie may be slowly poisoning Lina herself. By the time we see him ascending a darkened staircase with a suspicious glass of milk, an image made all the more indelible through the spectral glow the director captures in the glass, the evidence seems damning indeed.
In fact, even as Hitchcock stacks the deck against Johnnie, and takes full advantage of Grant's skill at conveying such menace, the director also dots his landscape with visual clues to Lina's own neurotic (and erotic) obsessions. The final scene forces us to reevaluate her behavior while leaving enough of a cloud over Johnnie to rob him, and us, of a complete exoneration. It's a wicked, unsettling payoff to a brilliantly executed thriller. --Sam Sutherland
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: 
- Twisted love
Suspenseful and fun.Grant and Fontaine are newlyweds in this film but is love or murder on their minds? A Hitchcock class-"macguffin" and all.
Rating: - 5 for Grant
If you look past the dated camera work, sets, all that, you have a great movie. 9 out of 10 Grant movies should automatically get 5 stars
Rating: 
- 2.5 stars out of 4
The Bottom Line:
Suspicion is a very good movie that's utterly torpedoed by a horrible ending which not only leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but renders all the tension and events that had preceded the ending a series of implausible coincidences; blame who you want for the terrible denouement, but don't see this Hitchcock chiller unless you're prepared to be disappointed.
Rating: 
- Studio Tampering Ruins Hitchcock Thriller
Cut from the same stylistic cloth as "Rebecca," director Alfred Hitchcock's first teaming with Cary Grant was this disappointing 1941 adaptation of Francis Iles' novel "Before the Fact." Hitchcock successfully cast Grant against type as Johnnie - a reckless, irresponsible playboy who marries the shy Lina (played by an ineffectual Joan Fontaine). Because of mounting circumstantial evidence, Lina suspects that her husband is a murderer. Lina's psychological tug of war builds to a ludicrous climax that ... Read More
Rating: - Very good early Hitchcock; misses the top tier due to questionable casting.Nice DVD package
Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for her performance in 1941's "Suspicion."The previous year she had portrayed a very similar character in Hitchcock's "Rebecca - Criterion Collection." Lina McLaidlaw is a slightly more confident and sophisticated version of The Second Mrs. de Winter.Both characters are naïve young Englishwomen, swept off their feet by handsome worldly men.They discover too late that the men they married may be capable of anything - even murder.
After the briefest ... Read More
- Twisted loveSuspenseful and fun.Grant and Fontaine are newlyweds in this film but is love or murder on their minds? A Hitchcock class-"macguffin" and all.
- 5 for GrantIf you look past the dated camera work, sets, all that, you have a great movie. 9 out of 10 Grant movies should automatically get 5 stars
- 2.5 stars out of 4The Bottom Line:
Suspicion is a very good movie that's utterly torpedoed by a horrible ending which not only leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but renders all the tension and events that had preceded the ending a series of implausible coincidences; blame who you want for the terrible denouement, but don't see this Hitchcock chiller unless you're prepared to be disappointed.
- Studio Tampering Ruins Hitchcock ThrillerCut from the same stylistic cloth as "Rebecca," director Alfred Hitchcock's first teaming with Cary Grant was this disappointing 1941 adaptation of Francis Iles' novel "Before the Fact." Hitchcock successfully cast Grant against type as Johnnie - a reckless, irresponsible playboy who marries the shy Lina (played by an ineffectual Joan Fontaine). Because of mounting circumstantial evidence, Lina suspects that her husband is a murderer. Lina's psychological tug of war builds to a ludicrous climax that ... Read More
- Very good early Hitchcock; misses the top tier due to questionable casting.Nice DVD packageJoan Fontaine won the Academy Award for her performance in 1941's "Suspicion."The previous year she had portrayed a very similar character in Hitchcock's "Rebecca - Criterion Collection." Lina McLaidlaw is a slightly more confident and sophisticated version of The Second Mrs. de Winter.Both characters are naïve young Englishwomen, swept off their feet by handsome worldly men.They discover too late that the men they married may be capable of anything - even murder.
After the briefest ... Read More
