Suspicion

Based on a novel by Francis Iles, Suspicion follows Joan Fontaine’s Lina as she impulsively meets and marries a sketchy fellow named Johnnie (Cary Grant) – with the narrative detailing Lina’s growing concern that Johnnie’s intentions are less than savory. Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock delivers a slow-moving yet consistently watchable drama that boasts brief instances of thriller-like plot twists, and it’s clear, certainly, that Suspicion‘s mild success is due almost entirely to the superlative efforts of its two stars – with both Fontaine and Grant turning in solid work that generally elevates the material on an ongoing basis. (Grant, especially, does a fantastic job of stepping into the shoes of a decidedly untrustworthy and possibly nefarious figure.) The bulk of the midsection, which revolves around Lina’s attempts at discerning the truth about her new husband, admittedly suffers from a somewhat hit-and-miss feel that’s compounded by the deliberateness of the picture’s pace, while the fairly abrupt (and unconvincing) conclusion ensures that the whole thing ends on a rather anticlimactic note. Still, Suspicion is, by and large, a perfectly passable endeavor that ultimately lands somewhere smack dab in the middle of Hitchcock’s body of work.

*** out of ****

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