The story of SUSPICION is well-known: Repressed, spinsterish Lina (Joan Fontaine) meets a devastatingly handsome man on a train who turns out to be Johnny Aysgarth, a local socialite. Unmarried, Aysgarth excites the desires of every woman who crosses his path. When he and Lina meet again by chance, he becomes smitten. A wary Lina refuses his attentions until she overhears a conversation in which her parents speak of her dismissively, saying that she's just not the marrying type & that they will therefore "have her on their hands" forever. Afterwards, Lina pursues Johnny - in fact, she stalks him, tracking his movements by telephone and obsessively reading everything about him. The ill-matched couple are married in due course, but Johnny turns out to be a ne'er-do-well and a schemer. Ultimately, Lina convinces herself that her husband is a murderer and she is meant to be his next victim until a glass of milk triggers an open confrontation...
Hitchcock's follow-up to REBECCA was a huge success back in November 1941 and remains one of his most popular today, but over the years has suffered a decline in its reputation, thanks largely to Hitchcock himself - for decades, he complained to anyone who would listen that RKO studio executives forced him to alter the conclusion. Yes, it is true - the ending of SUSPICION is NOT what Hitchcock CLAIMED he would have preferred, nor is the ending of the film the same as Francis Iles' 1932 source novel, "Before the Fact." In both the novel and the unfilmed ending, Johnny Aysgarth is a cold, manipulative sociopath who does indeed kill his best friend and later his wife. Certainly, the ending proposed by Hitchcock - in which Lina allows herself to be poisoned but not before she asks Johnny to mail a letter for her, a letter which reveals her husband's crimes - would have worked. The fact of the matter is that such an ending was impossible to shoot in 1941, when suicide could not be portrayed on screen. A legend has grown up that Hitchcock was forced to alter the "real" ending after a disastrous test screening, but that particular conclusion was rightly rejected by audiences - in it, Johnny brings Lina the famous glass of milk, then realizes what she is thinking. Stunned by the knowledge that his wife believes him capable of killing her, he leaves her to join the RAF, where he fights bravely in the Battle of Britain and becomes a hero. This ridiculous ending wound up where it deserved to be - on the cutting-room floor! I might be in the minority here, but I love SUSPICION as it is and have no complaints about the ending, which as it stands is one of the most shocking reversals in movie history. Rather than providing us with a tale of a murder from the victim's point of view, the stunning surprise of the ending turns SUSPICION into a tale of erotic obsession and sexual madness. Early memos between Hitchcock and the RKO production staff demonstrate that Hitchcock wished to concentrate on the main female character's inner fantasy life early in the production's development, as several biographers have now confirmed through research in studio archives. In a way, SUSPICION may be the ultimate MacGuffin - the entire movie is a clever bit of misdirection whose abrupt ending completely changes all that has come before. Rather than focus on the problem, "Is Cary Grant a killer?", a more appropriate question to ask oneself might be, "Is Joan Fontaine completely insane?" Despite Grant's top billing, this is Joan Fontaine's movie all the way, and she richly deserved her Best Actress Academy Award. SUSPICION is built around something very unusual in movies of this time - a woman's erotic, desiring gaze. It is Lina who initiates the relationship, staring so hard at Johnny when they meet that he becomes physically uncomfortable. It is Lina who pursues him, and it is Lina who - based only on slim evidence - convinces herself that her man is a killer. Unlike the source novel - which was about Johnny Aysgarth - SUSPICION places its female protagonist front and center. We experience the film entirely from Lina's viewpoint, and so of course we find ourselves believing that "Cary Grant is a killer!" and we are of course frustrated and puzzled to find out that it is all in Lina's mind at the end - because if Lina's perceptions were faulty, then so were ours! Bad vision and inaccurate perception are major themes in the film right from the start: Lina's myopic gaze - she cannot truly SEE what is right in front of her - becomes a metaphor for her character's inability to leave her dream world and perceive her husband and his actions with accuracy. Instead, Lina prefers the fantasy she has constructed inside her warped mind. Underneath its lush, glossy surface (few Hitchcock films are as physically beautiful as this one), SUSPICION takes us on a dark and disturbing journey into the mind of a madwoman who succumbs to paranoia and fear. Ironically, the reaction of so many to this film - a response based entirely on "what-might-have-been" fantasy rather than an unbiased look at the film as it really is - merely confirms the power of Hitchcock's scenario! If you fall into this mental trap, you are behaving exactly like Joan Fontaine's character in the movie! When you change the way you look at this film and accept it for what it is, the real brilliance of the story and the ending becomes apparent - Lina MIGHT be correct after all, but of course we will never know!
Hitchcock's follow-up to REBECCA was a huge success back in November 1941 and remains one of his most popular today, but over the years has suffered a decline in its reputation, thanks largely to Hitchcock himself - for decades, he complained to anyone who would listen that RKO studio executives forced him to alter the conclusion. Yes, it is true - the ending of SUSPICION is NOT what Hitchcock CLAIMED he would have preferred, nor is the ending of the film the same as Francis Iles' 1932 source novel, "Before the Fact." In both the novel and the unfilmed ending, Johnny Aysgarth is a cold, manipulative sociopath who does indeed kill his best friend and later his wife. Certainly, the ending proposed by Hitchcock - in which Lina allows herself to be poisoned but not before she asks Johnny to mail a letter for her, a letter which reveals her husband's crimes - would have worked. The fact of the matter is that such an ending was impossible to shoot in 1941, when suicide could not be portrayed on screen. A legend has grown up that Hitchcock was forced to alter the "real" ending after a disastrous test screening, but that particular conclusion was rightly rejected by audiences - in it, Johnny brings Lina the famous glass of milk, then realizes what she is thinking. Stunned by the knowledge that his wife believes him capable of killing her, he leaves her to join the RAF, where he fights bravely in the Battle of Britain and becomes a hero. This ridiculous ending wound up where it deserved to be - on the cutting-room floor! I might be in the minority here, but I love SUSPICION as it is and have no complaints about the ending, which as it stands is one of the most shocking reversals in movie history. Rather than providing us with a tale of a murder from the victim's point of view, the stunning surprise of the ending turns SUSPICION into a tale of erotic obsession and sexual madness. Early memos between Hitchcock and the RKO production staff demonstrate that Hitchcock wished to concentrate on the main female character's inner fantasy life early in the production's development, as several biographers have now confirmed through research in studio archives. In a way, SUSPICION may be the ultimate MacGuffin - the entire movie is a clever bit of misdirection whose abrupt ending completely changes all that has come before. Rather than focus on the problem, "Is Cary Grant a killer?", a more appropriate question to ask oneself might be, "Is Joan Fontaine completely insane?" Despite Grant's top billing, this is Joan Fontaine's movie all the way, and she richly deserved her Best Actress Academy Award. SUSPICION is built around something very unusual in movies of this time - a woman's erotic, desiring gaze. It is Lina who initiates the relationship, staring so hard at Johnny when they meet that he becomes physically uncomfortable. It is Lina who pursues him, and it is Lina who - based only on slim evidence - convinces herself that her man is a killer. Unlike the source novel - which was about Johnny Aysgarth - SUSPICION places its female protagonist front and center. We experience the film entirely from Lina's viewpoint, and so of course we find ourselves believing that "Cary Grant is a killer!" and we are of course frustrated and puzzled to find out that it is all in Lina's mind at the end - because if Lina's perceptions were faulty, then so were ours! Bad vision and inaccurate perception are major themes in the film right from the start: Lina's myopic gaze - she cannot truly SEE what is right in front of her - becomes a metaphor for her character's inability to leave her dream world and perceive her husband and his actions with accuracy. Instead, Lina prefers the fantasy she has constructed inside her warped mind. Underneath its lush, glossy surface (few Hitchcock films are as physically beautiful as this one), SUSPICION takes us on a dark and disturbing journey into the mind of a madwoman who succumbs to paranoia and fear. Ironically, the reaction of so many to this film - a response based entirely on "what-might-have-been" fantasy rather than an unbiased look at the film as it really is - merely confirms the power of Hitchcock's scenario! If you fall into this mental trap, you are behaving exactly like Joan Fontaine's character in the movie! When you change the way you look at this film and accept it for what it is, the real brilliance of the story and the ending becomes apparent - Lina MIGHT be correct after all, but of course we will never know!