“Dear you musn’t be angry with Johnnie, it’s a waste of time.” And, besides, what were you expecting jumping into a marriage with a few sweet words uttered to you and urged on by a little discouragement from your father?
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 film Suspicion was screened at the Safma Media Centre on Friday. The screening scheduled for 4pm, was pushed back because very few people had shown up. Movies at Safma are normally screened at 5pm and that was when the regulars showed up —around 15 minutes into the film. Another issue was with the DVD’s subtitles, which stopped playing halfway through the film, and resumed towards the end showing old dialogues and detracting from the experience.
Lina, the female lead, is in for a surprise the moment her honeymoon ends and she returns with Johnnie to find a most wonderfully done house waiting for her, only to know moments later that dear old Johnnie cannot really pay for all this. He is in for a surprise too, because Lina’s yearly allowance won’t suffice for the housekeeping and she cannot really ask her father or mother for money, especially not after she went behind their backs to get married.
Johnnie’s attempts at shortcuts make matters worse and soon the rather light romance turns into a pot full of suspicions. The story is told from Lina’s perspective, and Hitchcock masterfully manipulates the scenery to make us look what she is looking at and feel what she is feeling. But are these suspicions baseless, brought own by Lina’s neurosis? Or are they real?
To give that away will be to give away the movie. Joan Fontaine won an Oscar for her brilliant portrayal of the neurotic Lina. Incidentally this was the only time Hitchcock ever directed an actor into an Oscar-winning performance. Cary Grant as Johnnie was both funny and menacing.
Hitchcock’s preferred ending was out the moment Grant came onboard. So while people regret Hitchcock’s intended ending not being filmed, the truth is it was never even scripted, according to MacGuffin’s website, which houses scholarly articles on Hitchcock and his films.
A number of endings were, however, tested, with the version making the final cut of the movie being made at the very last, as an attempt by Hitchcock to salvage the ending and to add his trademark twist to the end. A twist “that must have looked like genius to Hitchcock in comparison to what he had on paper up to that point”, according to Bill Krohn on MacGuffin.
That’s not to say the ending is bad. It is abrupt and slightly underwhelming but gets the job done. It is not a disaster and coupled with a solid first half, and meticulous direction, one could do much worse than Suspicion.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 22nd, 2011.
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