Some thoughts on being reacquainted with Suspicion (1941)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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1 January (Tweets added to the third end-note, 25 August)
Some thoughts on being reacquainted with Suspicion (1941)
However, as hinted at in @FaberBooks' Hitchock on Hitchcock [part of their series on film directors : https://t.co/AsBeKcvD6N], and - to whom thanks - explicated by hitchcockmaster, this was *not* the original conception : https://t.co/tJKyMF0fRV pic.twitter.com/AybVsHBNqX— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 9, 2018
Ingrid Bergman (Dr. Constance Petersen) and Gregory Peck (John Ballantyne), then joined by Michael Chekhov (Dr. Michael Brülov) for more dream-work, in Spellbound (1945)¹
Although it results that, in Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll - briefly in Suspicion, too), 'the inmates have taken over the asylum', Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) almost unwaveringly believes in John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck), despite Dr. Michael Brulow (Michael Chekhov). https://t.co/Di1EmfGjBV— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2018
Leo G. Carroll (Dr. Murchison) - joined by Ingrid Bergman (Dr. Constance Petersen) here in a link to the near-dénouement
The surges in Franz Waxman's score² for Suspicion (1941) go from emotional peaks, as when Lina overhears herself effectively described (by her mother, within) as dull and so impulsively kisses Johnnie, to ones - reverting to form ? - of terror, at what he might have done, or be³.
We scarcely see the exterior design of Lina and Johnnie's matrimonial property, when they return from honeymoon⁴, but we soon become acquainted with the fact that what we must assume is some sort of large cupola, at all sorts of times of day, has the shadow of its struts cast onto the living area and stairs.
Just as those surges, as part of Hitchcock's vision, help overwhelm with terror what is reasonable in us, too, likewise, more and more – without our doing much more than taking it for granted – does it turn from a benign compass to an imperious clock to an alarming web... ? :
Maybe, in this famous scene, we credit it - if we think of its plausible origins at all - as cast by the full moon, but, then, with all that it traditionally implies about sanity (Johnnie's ? Lina's ?)...
End-notes :
¹ Seemingly titled, in Italy, io ti salverò ('I will save you') :
² Waxman, under the category 'Music (Music score for a dramatic picture)', was nominated for an Academy Award (in 1942).
³ In 'Murder - With English on it' [originally published in The New York Times Magazine (3 March 1957 ; 17, 42)], Hitchcock chooses to say In Suspicion, the story of a wife who suspects her husband of being a homicidal maniac, I had to make [my emphasis] the suspicion ultimately [my emphasis] a figment of her imagination. The consensus was [my emphasis] that audiences would not want to be told in the last few frames of film that as popular a personality as Cary Grant was a murderer, doomed to exposure. (The article is collected as part of Faber & Faber's film series on directors, in Hitchcock on Hitchcock (London, 1995), pp. 133-137.)
However, although the article does not cite this reference, hitchcockmaster finds ample evidence that, after principal shooting, Hitchcock found that the film had been cut down to 55 minutes, out of the fear mentioned (which arose from preview screenings at RKO, and after changes of personnel made by the studio, that lost Hitchcock the support of the two men most closely involved with the film). The article also shows that few people liked the ending of the film, as duly completed in post-production and released.
Yet naming no source for making this assertion about the film, versus the material in such web-sites as :https://t.co/tJKyMF0fRVhttps://t.co/C5CkMlrDQh— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 25, 2018
* By Jenny Curtis. Michael Friedman Publishing Group, Inc. (MetroBooks), New York, 1998. pic.twitter.com/Vb6CSRZaYs
As faces aren't symmetrical*, it brings out a Craigian quality to Cary Grant (even in the already not very likeable guise of Johnnie Aysgarth).
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 23, 2021
* We may also forget that we most often see ourselves in reflected form ?
In full, the caption in Cary Grant : A Life in Pictures reads :
Grant accepted the role of John Aynsgar on the condition that the part be softened from that of a murderer to one who only appears to be a murderer. The ambiguous nature of Aynsgar presented a unique challenge to Grant. He was required to appear both guilty and innocent at all times. The air of mystery he'd brought to earlier roles served him well in Suspicion. He was both playful and menacing, often within the same scene, and made these mood shifts so smoothly that no one really noticed he was doing some of his best work. Based on the novel Before the Fact, the film's name was changed to Suspicion so that the audience wouldn't know whether or not Grant's character was a killer until the last scene. Hitchcock wrote and filmed two separate endings to the film, hoping to do it his way with Aynsgar as his killer and his wife the willing victim. But early preview audiences preferred the soft ending, in which Joan Fontaine's character is so paranoid that she only imagines her husband is trying to kill her.
⁴ Our best chance to see this hallway, and how especially it is lit from above, comes from at 28 : 43 (in the colour version), whereas, when Lina comes in from riding and meets ‘Beaky’ (Nigel Bruce) for the first time (at 38 : 30), the property appears to have a perfectly flat façade (which gives little away what is supposed to be behind it).
One reviewer (quoted by hitchcockmaster³) somewhat disapproved of the use of the image cast by the putative cupola, calling it, in The Times, an effective, if a little crude, use of shadow (4 December 1941).
Post-script : Since the above was written, this still has been found, which appears to show the exterior (from an angle) :
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
