Actors - Suspicion

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	Actors - Suspicion

Suspicion (1941) is a film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. It also stars Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans and Heather Angel.

It is based on Englishman Francis Iles's 1932 novel Before the Fact. Suspicion is one of the famous examples where, in the process of rewriting the novel for the big screen, the plot was tampered with to an extent that Iles´s original intention was completely reversed. As William L. De Andrea states in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994), Suspicion "was supposed to be the study of a murder as seen through the eyes of the eventual victim. However, because Cary Grant was to be the killer and Joan Fontaine the killee, the studio—RKO—decreed a different ending, which Hitchcock supplied and then spent the rest of his life complaining about."

During the 1930s, soon after the advent of the talkies, sunny-boy Cary Grant acquired the screen image of the perfect young gentleman, the kind of cheerful young man every mother in her right mind would want as her son-in-law. By 1940 Grant had starred in so many light-hearted romantic films as well as screwball comedies that casting him as a scheming murderer seemed risky from the start. As far as the literary basis of the film is concerned, Iles's novel is experimental in that it is not a whodunit: It does not take long to determine the identity of the villain and his motives. According to Colin Dexter, Before the Fact is a "crime novel" rather than a "detective novel", Iles being "the father of the psychological suspense novel as we know it today". It is true that the police do not play any role in the book; none of the characters is ever charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted of one.

The novel: Outline of the plot

Before the Fact is the story of Lina, a "born victim". She is raised in the country in the early decades of the 20th century and, at 28, she is still a virgin and in danger of becoming an old spinster. She finds country life with her parents rather boring, and only lives for strangers that might be passing through or that have been invited by someone living in or near their village. When the novel opens, such a stranger has just arrived: 27 year-old Johnnie Aysgarth, from an impoverished family who are, as she is told, "of rotten stock". General McLaidlaw, Lina´s father, is opposed to the marriage, and everyone seems to know that all that Johnnie is after is Lina's money, Lina herself having been told from an early age on that Joyce, her younger sister, has got all the looks and that she, Lina, has got the brains.

In spite of these difficulties, Lina and Johnnie get married after only a short engagement. They go to Paris on their honeymoon where they stay at the best hotels and dine at the best restaurants, and, on their return to England, move into an eight-bedroom house in London. Only six weeks later, Johnnie, who has not got a job but whom Lina expects to have a regular income anyway, admits to his wife that they have been living on borrowed money and that there is none left any longer. Gradually, though unwillingly, Lina takes over the responsibility for the couple's finances and suggests to Johnnie that he should get a regular job. Also, they leave the expensive house and move to the country; they settle down in a part of Dorset where they do not know anybody and start living in a more modest house. For the time being, they both rely entirely on Lina's allowance. Reluctantly, Johnnie agrees to take a job: He becomes the steward of a large estate a Captain Melbeck has come into. Lina would always have liked to have children, but, as it turns out, she never gets pregnant.

As time goes by, Lina realizes - gradually and unwillingly - that Johnnie is a crook. Apart from being a compulsive liar, he by and by turns out to be

a thief: For example, during a tennis party he steals an expensive diamond belonging to one of the guests and, soon afterwards, a piece of Lina´s jewelry. Also, he removes Lina's four Hepplewhite chairs and sells them to an antique shop in Bournemouth.
a forger: He forges Lina's signature to be able to cash one of her cheques.
an embezzler: He embezzles Captain Melbeck's money to be able to pay his gambling debts. Luckily, Melbeck says he is not going to prosecute.
an adulterer: During his marriage he has affairs with a lot of women and village girls including Lina's best friend, Janet Caldwell - he has rented a flat in Bournemouth especially for that purpose -, and Ella, their parlour maid, by whom he even has a son.
eventually, a murderer: He incites General McLaidlaw to do a trick involving chairs while he and Lina are staying with the General for Christmas. This is too much physical exercise for the General, and he dies a sudden death. Some years later, Johnnie sees no other way of cheating a rich school friend of his, Beaky Thwaite, out of his money than to travel incognito to Paris with him, go to a brothel there and have him drink a whole beaker of brandy in one gulp so that he drops dead.

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