From: ggggg9271@gmail.com   
      
   On Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 8:40:01 AM UTC-7, Matt Barry wrote:   
   > Alfred Hitchcock can be a difficult director to write about, because his    
   > name, themes and favorite obsessions are always larger than the individual    
   > films that make up his body of work. As with any large body of work, there    
   > are stronger and weaker works. "Suspicion", a 1941 suspense thriller    
   > starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, is a film that is easy to classify in    
   > that latter category. But, despite it's flaws, I would rank it closer to the    
   > former.   
   > The plot revolves around a charming cad, Johnny, played by Cary Grant. He    
   > ends up getting married to young and innocent Joan Fontaine, but soon,    
   > mysterious things begin happening that give her a very bad feeling about    
   > him. Soon, she even becomes convinced that he is plotting to murder her for    
   > her inheritance, which she has ended up forfeiting as her father doesn't    
   > approve of Johnny.   
   > What is remarkable about the film is not the plot, nor the performances, but    
   > the sheer style that Hitchcock brings to every frame. He was still working    
   > very much in what I see as his "British" style. There is a calm, almost    
   > lyrical pace to the film even in its more intense moments. He is still using    
   > his performers more as "types" than as real characters, which seemed to be    
   > the traditional approach in his British work. We see the remnants of his    
   > "British" stylistic sensibility in a number of his early films, certainly    
   > "Rebecca", most clearly in "Foreign Correspondent", and to a lesser degree    
   > in "Suspicion". The one exception may be "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", a thoroughly    
   > American screwball comedy that Hitchcock (supposedly) directed as a favor to    
   > Carole Lombard. However, this film, along with "The Trouble with Harry",    
   > perhaps gets closer than any other of his American films to what he was    
   > trying to do all along in Britain, which was to make comedies. Hitchcock's    
   > sense of humor is above all what marks his "British" style. I would argue    
   > that it was with "Saboteur" and "Shadow of a Doubt" in 1942 and 1943,    
   > respectively, that Hitchcock really moved fully into an "American style".   
   > The ending of "Suspicion" also recalls the ending of Hitchcock's "The    
   > Lodger", in that the obviously guilty man is suddenly announced not to be    
   > the killer after all, not for any logical connection to the events that have    
   > preceded it in the plot, but because the studio felt that the public just    
   > didn't want to see lovable Cary Grant (like Ivor Novello in the earlier    
   > film) as a killer. This is the kind of studio-era interference out of which    
   > the auteur theory was born, because although such a forced ending could have    
   > ruined the film, Hitchcock makes it work, somehow, despite our senses    
   > telling us of the obvious incongruity of the ending compared with what has    
   > gone before.   
   > "Suspicion" is a solid Hitchcock film, not one of his very best, but    
   > containing many of his favorite elements and handled with a clear style that    
   > enhances what would have been a fairly routine picture in other hands.   
   > --    
   > Matt Barry   
   > View my films at: www.youtube.com/comedyfilm   
   > Read my blog at: http://filmreel.blogspot.com   
      
   (Youtube upload):   
      
   "CLASSIC MOVIE REVIEW Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s SUSPICION - STEVE HAYES   
   Tired Old Queen at the Movies"   
      
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