Suspicion (1941) on Netflix
NR19411h 39mFilm-NoirMysteryThriller
In England the shy Lina McLaidlaw meets the charming gambler Johnnie Aysgarth, who courts and marries her. After their honeymoon she learns that he has no job and lives on borrowed money.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.2/1045,659 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
On a train in England, Johnnie Aysgarth, a charming gambler, rides in a first class car on a third class ticket and meets the shy Lina McLaidlaw. He courts her, and despite the disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw, the two elope. They return from a lavish honeymoon to an extravagant house that Johnnie has arranged for them. There Lina learns that her husband holds no job and no income, lives on money borrowed from friends, and had counted on support from her father. She persuades him to take a position with his cousin, the estate agent Captain Melbeck, and he goes to work.
Cast
Show all 19 cast
- Violet Campbellas Mrs. Barham (uncredited)
- Carol Curtis-Brownas Jessie Barham (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Suspicion (1941)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
RKO decreed a different ending from the novel's because Cary Grant played the killer and Joan Fontaine the victim; Hitchcock supplied the new ending, was quoted saying he was forced to alter it, and complained about it for the rest of his life.- Joan Fontaine won the 1941 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Lina, the only Oscar-winning acting performance in any Alfred Hitchcock film.
SPOILER
An ending was written but never used in which Lina, afraid Johnnie will poison her, writes an incriminating letter to her mother, asks him to mail it, then drinks the milk; the final shot would have shown him dropping the letter into a mailbox.- Nathanael West and Boris Ingster wrote a screenplay adaptation of Before the Fact over seven weeks, West on characterization and dialogue; when RKO assigned the novel to Hitchcock he had his own script by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison and Alma Reville, and the West-Ingster one was abandoned and never produced.
- Suspicion was first planned as a B picture for George Sanders and Anne Shirley, then for Laurence Olivier and Frances Dee once Hitchcock joined; Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine were cast instead, Fontaine borrowed from David O. Selznick for an expensive fee after RKO had dropped her years before.
- Johann Strauss's waltz "Wiener Blut" runs through Suspicion as a leitmotif: its light original version plays when Lina is happy with Johnnie, and a threatening minor-key version when she grows suspicious of him.
