A Film Canon

Suspicion continues Foreign Correspondent's project of documenting the moment at which an uncannily enlivened object forces a protagonist to completely reconfigure their conception of the world. In this case, that object takes the form of playboy Johnny Aysgarth (Cary Grant) - or, more accurately, the reification of Grant's screen persona that he provides, reducing himself to a mere receptacle for the female gaze; a hyperbolic, one-dimensional purveyor of charm. This is enhanced by Hitchcock's unusual editing style, which minimises Grant's entries and exits in such a way as to construe him as something that merely appears, akin to the portrait and photograph that haunt the narrative, rather than the source of any immediately explicable agency. As a result, the burden of acting falls squarely upon Joan Fontaine, who, as Johnny's wife, gradually suspects him of planning to murder her. To this end, Hitchcock mines her face for all the expressions of surprise, suspicion and disorientation that it can produce, while attempting to construe everything else as so much connective tissue between her and Johnny, akin to the web-like window that casts its shadow over their house, or even the wind that so often blows them together, such that a combination of scrabble letters to read 'murder' takes on a meaning beyond sheer randomness. This strategy doesn't always work, partly due to a slightly contrived script, but does find spectacular expression in the penultimate scene, during which Johnny brings his wife a glass of milk that may or may not be poisoned, and that is lit from the inside, suffusing the entire house with the import of this crucial gesture. From this perspective, the rejection of Hitchcock's original ending was fatal, since it robs Grant's one-dimensionality of its thematic resonance, and the film of its delicate tone, retrospectively reducing it to an awkward fusion of screwball comedy, thriller and romance.