Glamour, Unapologetically

Films do not come more luxuriant than 1955’s To Catch a Thief.

Flush with splendid vistas from the French Riviera, lavish hotel interiors populated with beautiful people and a plot that revolves around priceless jewels and culminates in a costume party, the film as it unfolds almost literally bubbles and sparkles like a cool glass of champagne. Even so, I cannot help but imagine that part of the film’s success is the result of an unintentional contrast brought about by time. In this I mean that if filmed today, such an endeavor as To Catch a Thief would likely come across as opulent and irritating, but under the astute and tasteful direction of Alfred Hitchcock the original retains a unique charm, despite its almost paper-thin plot and rather predictable resolution, that many other films hunger for but more often than not fail to achieve.

The critical difference, I suppose, is glamour and how we understand it and what it meant --- both then and now --- and how Hitchcock was able to harness the glamour of an exotic location and two Hollywood legends in such a pleasing manner. In the case of the former, I doubt the Riviera has ever filmed poorly, but at the same time, I do not think Hitchcock made his choice by happenstance, either. Rather, I believe he chose the sunny coast of South France because it was about as far away as possible, in aesthetic terms, as the soundstages that represented the courtyards and alleyways of 1954’s Rear Window, the masterpiece of film that Hitchcock made just prior to To Catch a Thief.

Indeed, To Catch a Thief is something of an ethereal twin to Rear Window, if you ask me. (The bright, shiny side of Rear Window's dark half of the coin?) Consider, both films essentially track a courtship between an action-oriented, somewhat roguish leading-man and a leading lady -- played on both occasions by Grace Kelly -- who is refined, erudite and wealthy. In both cases, the female is attracted to the man, in part, precisely because of his circumspect employment (freelance photographer in Rear Window, former cat-burglar in To Catch a Thief). To further the comparison, in Rear Window we see grubby alleyways and the confined, interior courtyard of an apartment building, whereas in To Catch a Thief we are outdoors for the vast majority of the movie, swimming in the ocean, riding in open-top cars or moving dangerously across rooftops. If Hitchcock, a man ever prone to boredom, wanted to make a film almost the polar opposite of Rear Window, he did a decent job in selecting this lighthearted romp.

That is not to say the Hitchcock touch is absent from this film. Indeed, a good many of the traits are on display here and part of the reason why the film works so well is that it remains in the hands of master craftsmen. Had another director, paired with another set of stars, made this picture, it simply would not have worked as well. In this sense, the fact that Hitchcock himself abandoned the deeply psychological themes of 1954’s Rear Window and settled on proverbial cinematic, champagne bubbles cannot be held against him if we simply adjust our expectations and allow ourselves to relish the results onscreen.

This is a majestic picture, with much to look at and enjoy, not the least of which is Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It would be difficult under any circumstances to dislike the two and almost impossible here, where they shine together with real chemistry and purpose. That both are beautiful, charming people is even more obvious in their placement together (I always though James Stewart a bit to parochial for Kelly in Rear Window, whereas Grant seemingly was born in a tuxedo.) The absent power of yesterday's stars is again affirmed, in that if you try to imagine Grant and Kelly's counterparts today making such a film, you simply cannot imagine it being worth watching.

The death of old Hollywood at the hands of tabloids has made the modern day greats less mysterious, in that we know too much about them, and consequently more annoying. If you cannot catch my meaning hunt down the famous bit where Grant during a television interview quips something along the lines that everyone wants to be Cary Grant even Cary Grant wants to be Cary Grant. Back then, the persona and the person were inseparable and that only adds to the fireworks, which in this case, Hitchcock took pains to physically depict on the screen.

As is the case in North by Northwest, Grant is almost entirely a passenger to the plot here and he simply reacts wherever he is thrown. Although Hitchcock utilized this method in quite a few of his films because it put the audience and the protagonist on equal footing, I have always felt Grant seemed the master of the method, perhaps because he made so many comedies, such Arsenic and Old Lace, that required such physical, reactionary acting. Here, he is accused of returning to his former thieving ways and decides the only way to clear his name is by "catching" the thief himself, a feat he almost literally achieves when he grabs hold of the cat burglar on the rooftop of a swanky French villa that has just hosted an equally swanky party.

Of course the real "thief" being "caught" is Grant himself and the person doing the catching is Ms. Kelly, who for the second Hitchcock outing in a row will essentially snag the unmarried, action-oriented bachelor through a combination of glamour, flirtation and mystery. There is then some interesting dissection in the film about feminine virtue, which often appears in Hitchcock’s films with leading actresses of the blond persuasion. That is, Kelly throughout presents herself as graceful and strongly effeminate. Although she is not virginal, she is virtuous. In contrast, the film's true antagonist --- in both the crime and the courting --- is Brigitte Auber's young Frenchwoman, who clearly is not virtuous. Her sexuality, unlike Grace Kelly's, is flouted openly, and therefore is presented as tawdry and insincere. Although Auber's character clearly has some feelings for Grant, it is also apparent she is willing to manipulate him and sacrifice him for herself. The opposite of this, Grace Kelly is honest and supportive, even as she too nudges Grant towards an idea he himself might not have thought of: Marriage.

The results, as I have said, are sumptuous and fun. If this is a "weak" effort of Hitchcock's it can only be thought of as so given the enormity of the man's stronger pictures. The plot twists here are fairly appreciable before they arrive and the thieving itself a rather flimsy and far-fetched excuse for some excellent diversions. Lest we forget, this is courtship on cinema, and as such, the majesty of an allegory feels appropriate. That Hitchcock still chose crime and mystery as the vehicle for his romantic comedy certainly says a great deal about him, but it also works so well here in all of its finery that I doubt viewers complained too loudly.

The Greatest Nonsense of All

What can I say about one of my favorite films of all time?

I once compelled my three best friends to accompany me to AFI’s opulent theater just outside the nation’s capital so I could see North by Northwest on the big screen. Neither the wonderful setting – all classic film lovers should go there – nor the film disappointed.

Alfred Hitchcock made better pictures, with greater depth and a more detailed examination of the human condition, for sure, but none of those Herculean efforts comes even remotely close to this outing in terms of sheer cinematic enjoyment. Put simply, this movie is like candy or whatever other guilty pleasure you enjoy: You know it is ridiculous and you probably should not be eating it, but you savor every bite because of its inherent wonderfulness.

The plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, which does not stand much scrutiny, revolves around a rather juvenile case of mistaken identity that eventually leads to attempted murder and some grand chases that all eventually have something to do with international espionage. Cary Grant, whose smarmy turn as the smug Madison Avenue advertising man has rightly attracted adoration, famously quipped to Hitchcock that the film had a terrible script and he could not make heads or tails of it. Hitchcock told Grant he was unconsciously repeating his character’s lines. I leave it to the audiences to determine who is more right, but there is a sort of uncontrolled zaniness in how film rushes – almost madly – from one scene to another, until, in perhaps the film’s most famous sequence, everything slows and there is nothing but silence and the drone of an airplane for several agonizingly long minutes.

The crop duster chasing Grant might not have aged well – the crash, in particular, looks and feels a little silly – but the scene’s inherent power remains. After being hurled through the plot, Grant is finally dangled a respite that hints at some sort of resolution to his case of mistaken identity, only to be attacked and propelled back into the fray yet again. However, to assert the whole movie, like this scene itself, is completely bewildering would be a mistake. The fields surrounding Grant in the iconic scene are intentionally as grid-like as the title sequence, signifying that there is a deliberate pattern to the film, one in which almost every line is carefully constructed to edge the plot along in its general direction, which is, geographically speaking, Northwest.

At the same time, Hitchcock himself said he practiced “absurdity quite religious” when interview by Francois Truffaut, and this is never more on display than it is in this film. From almost the film’s opening scene, when Grant tells us that “In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration," the film motors along, with barely a care as to how realistic its various parts are functioning. But at the heart of all its madness, as I have already suggested, there is indeed order, as many of the scenes themselves show us. The library Grant is accosted in is immaculate. Later, the wilderness he encounters his lover in is equally as ordered. From chaos, comes a kind of order, Hitchcock is showing us. And thus, his film works and it becomes believable after it has stewed in its own irreverence.  

Man and a woman in an ordered wilderness...

In addition to a reference to Grant’s travels, the title is a nod to a line in Hamlet’s rant about his own insanity, insanity that of course was concocted to shield his true motives. And herein lies another clue, as it increasingly becomes obvious everyone in the film is not what they seem. Grant is a dilettante forced to play a spy, whereas Eva Marie Saint is spy forced to play a dilettante in order to get closer to James Mason, the film’s excellent and cunning villain. Mason himself also plays several roles. He is the host of a party in a home he does not own and a culture vulture buying precious art not out of any sense of refinement, but to enable his espionage transactions. That a love between Grant and Saint emerges at the end of all this deception and role-playing is surely not a plot-twist inserted to please audiences? I rather think it's another of Hitchcock's wry commentaries on life. 

Along the way, there is a great deal of fun. Grant is pitch-perfect throughout and Saint manages to be both sensual and smart at the same time. Indeed, the knows more than our hero does for much of the picture and outmaneuvers him on her way to marrying him, a theme later repeated by Hitchcock in Rear Window. The scene between the two on the train to Chicago is also an amazing exemplar of how the scripts of yesterday were forced to dance around sex with flirtation and suggestion, both of which seem preferable to where movies have sunk to today. 

At the same time, it is also interesting to note precisely how close the film is to a Bond movie. There is a cultured villain (Mason), the scenes on train reminiscent of From Russia with Love and the showdown on Mount Rushmore feels like a Bond ending, though perhaps one with less gusto.

The cultured villain

No matter, a foot hardly is put wrong in this effort. The acting, direction and general melee of a picture all conspire together to create great enjoyment, none of which I think has abated today. The theater I saw the film in was packed and had people of all ages. From the comments I gathered after, the film was thoroughly enjoyed by all, no matter how much of it was sheer and utter cinematic nonsense…

Difficult to Dislike

Like climatic battles between two titanic empires, romantic comedies are damn near run things that fail or succeed by the scantest of margins. Miscalculate the levity, make a poor casting choice or choose an inappropriate setting and any effort in this genre can easily become ridiculous, sappy, unfunny – or worst of all, irritating.

 

Thankfully, the convergence of skill and craftsmanship behind Charade make it almost impossible to dislike. The 1963 film boasts a talented cast led by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, a delightful score and a spy game stratagem that unfolds with exactly the right mixture of playful shenanigans and baited-breath. There is nothing approaching greatness in this movie, but whoever goes looking for greatness in romantic comedies is bound to be disappointed. Fun, formatted with typical cleverness, is more what we are after – and we get to have quite a lot of fun in this semi-serious romp of a picture.

Unfortunately, I suppose some of the tongue-in-cheek that makes Charade such a hoot is lost on the contemporary viewer. Released at virtually the height of the Cold War, a time when both the local cinema and the living room television are alive with spy stories, Charade’s not-so-hidden agenda is levity in the face of overwhelming dread. That director Stanley Donen succeeds so well in satirizing the easily recognizable tropes of the spy genre and the thriller is a testament to precisely how well he understands both. Labeled the “best” Hitchcock film never made by Hitchcock, Charade’s audience is continually asked to follow a film that looks and feels like the great British master’s work right up until the punch lines materialize and burst whatever self-important bubbles were forming.

Parade of Fools.

Joel and Ethan Coen achieved something close to this in 2008’s Burn After Reading, but the Coen duet do not have Donen’s appreciation for the musical rhythms of humor. Donen, the director of the seminal Singin’ in the Rain, knows more about moving humans around the set, and as a result, set-pieces such as the funeral scene in which Hepburn watches in amazement as a parade of oddball characters parade before her eyes unfold with a dizzying feeling of frolic almost completely devoid in the Coen satire.

Hitchcock-ian?

Elsewhere, the mood remains far too light, the plot far too much what-you-see-is-what-you-get for it ever to really be mistaken for Hitchcock, but even so, there are certainly some Hitchcock-ian flourishes on display.  Chief among them, of course, is the fact that the plot revolves around the innocent bystander (Hepburn) who unwillingly becomes immersed in a complicated espionage plot – a setup Hitchcock utilized several different times, each to great effect. The other touch that made me think of Hitch comes when Grant faces down one of the film’s villains on the roof of the hotel where much of the principle action occurs. Part Rear Window, part North by Northwest, the scene unfolds in a wonderful series of lattice-like shadows cast by a neon sign. The roof’s gradual slope to death-by-falling is both obvious and suspenseful at the same time, and the choreography leading up to the inevitable is staged as masterfully as anything Hitchcock did. Other moments, such as the opening at the ski resort, are funnier when viewed from the historical aftermath of the numerous snow scenes in the James Bond franchise we have all loved and endured for more than four decades. And I doubt there is anything more perfect than the gun pointed at Hepburn in the film’s opening few shots.

Always ephemeral.

The timely murder of Hepburn’s husband saves her from agonizing about divorcing him in favor of Grant (who she meets at aforementioned ski resort). The death also launches the film’s action, as we quickly learn the husband was involved in some kind of espionage or criminality plot. What follows is a largely a comedy of errors, in which Hepburn muddles and giggles her way through several acts of spying and a few attempts on her life. Through it all, Grant is conveniently at her side, dashing and indecipherable until virtually the last frame of the film, when his true nature is finally revealed. Even more interestingly, the film takes great pains to chide Grant for being far too old for the petite and always elfin Ms. Hepburn. Grant, who turned the lead in Roman Holiday several years earlier precisely because of the age difference between the two, supposedly insisted the script contain the jokes – and they work precisely because one of Grant’s strengths has always been self-depreciation.  

Everyone involved probably made better pictures, but as a B-side to the rest of their careers, this is not too far off in sheer quality. I enjoyed this film for what it is and throughout felt a twinge of nostalgia and sadness, largely because contemporary attempts to recreate the chemistry that works so well in Charade now seems beyond Hollywood. The occasional moments of slowness – the script, I think, could have been tightened 15 minutes – does not detract from the final product’s overall punch. This is a fun movie, made by skilled people who know how to entertain audiences.

Mr. Leading Man

It is hard to know where to begin with Cary Grant.

It seems obvious the Bristol-born Englishman should be the subject of this site’s second actor profile, but finding the right words to describe the precise constellation of his career is challenging. Born Archibald Alexander Leach in 1904, Grant went to Hollywood in 1931 where he first broke into films as a kind of rubber-man actor, one whose limbs and face could be invisibly tugged by directors intent on physically punishing the lead in their film in order to provoke howls of laughter from audiences. He was wacky in the vein of Charlie Chaplin, with impeccable physical timing and an uncanny ability to simultaneously make the absurd less ridiculous and more funny.

Grant, the physical comedian

Although his two outings with Mae West – She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel – are probably where his star burst into being, I am partial to Arsenic and Old Lace, which I view as something of a finale to Grant’s early comedic period (although by 1944 he had already played the dark and ultimately indecipherable antagonist in Alfred Hitchcock’s highly underrated Suspicion). Arsenic and Old Lace’s preposterous plot allows Grant enough space to showcase his full array of talent. Mortimer Brewster’s character could be stodgy, but Grant’s incredible ability to amuse and charm ensures that Brewster is always accessible and never aloof from the audience. That Grant continued to play similar elites for much of his career and never come across as snobby or unapproachable is a testament to the delicacy of his performances and his ability to connect with moviegoers, regardless what the plot demanded from him.

Anyone doubting the skill and depth of this achievement should consider the ease with which we accept Cary Grant as Cary Grant. What I mean by this is that a great deal of acting is about making the effort of the performance appear effortlessness – and nobody does this like Grant, an actor who disappears into his on-screen persona so deeply and convincingly that separating the two is difficult. “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person,” Grant said. “Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” Thus, his famous attempt at self-effacing humor – “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant” – is much more than just a joke. It is a revelation that Grant was pretending to be Cary Grant and the acting reached such a point that nobody knew the difference anymore, himself included.

Regardless of method, Grant eventually became Hollywood’s perfect leading man, capable of playing the lead in a romantic comedy or the protagonist of an action-packed thriller. Whatever the script called for, Grant’s cool and capable demeanor and his stylized delivery fit the bill. Critics said James Bond is a character every man wants to be and every woman wants to be with, but the same could be said of Grant by the time he reached the height of his fame in the 1950s. Perhaps this is why he was briefly considered to portray Bond in Dr. No?

Personally, I doubt Grant could have pulled of the cruelty called for in playing the famous British spy, but he comes damn close to something like it in Notorious, an incredibly underrated film where he casually pits Ingrid Bergman against her husband. In addition to being a great spy film, Notorious showcases a facet of Grant’s acting – specifically, his ability to play darker roles – that most directors unfortunately chose not to pursue (Hitchcock being the solitary exception). In this sense, the claim that Grant traded introspection for affability is accurate. Throughout his career, his roles never allow him to reveal even the slightest amount of indecisiveness or insecurity. Indeed, Grant maintains his masculine poise even in the films where the plot revolves around his character being caught up in stratagems beyond his knowledge or control (see North by Northwest, Arsenic and Old Lace or To Catch a Thief).

On the run, Grant still seems in control.

Tall, dark and handsome in every way the phrase is meant to be understood, Grant cut a lean figure in his slightly-baggy suits. His perfect hair and well-manicured appearance walked right up to the line of the dandy-ness, but never quite crossed it. Personality plays a large part in separating him from Hollywood’s insufferable beauties. For all his looks and charm, Grant never took himself seriously – either in life or on the screen. His aforementioned willingness to engage in the absurd and poke fun at himself is precisely why we like him so much. It is impossible, for example, to imagine Humphrey Bogart climbing into a shower with a suit on and washing himself with soap to amuse Audrey Hepburn the way Grant does in Charade. Bogart is too stoic, too straightforward. In contrast, Grant is lighthearted and never too serious, even when gun is pointed at him and his life appears to be on the line.

Forever classic

Like a lot of other great actors, Grant missed out on winning an Oscar through the competitive process, so the Academy gave him an honorary award in 1970. The notion that Grant could have died unrecognized by film’s most-esteemed critical body boggles the mind. Among all the epitaphs written about him, I propose to add the following honorary title: Mr. Leading Man. Whatever the script, whatever its location and plot and action, there was a time when a producer could pick up the phone and secure the services of Cary Grant, and in doing so, know that one the most important roles in his film was in the best of all hands.

Key Performances:

North by Northwest

Arsenic and Old Lace

Notorious

Bringing up Baby

The Philadelphia Story

Five Classic Spy Films

To be a voyeur, to peak at a private world not your own is a fundamental part of reading a book or going to see a movie or play. As a reader or an audience member, you are, for a time, permitted to survey that which is typically hidden from you during your everyday life. The only way you can learn about actual people as much as you learn about characters in fiction is by spying on them. Perhaps this is why spies and their genre films have such a visceral pull for audiences. Add sex, lies and state secrets to the essential urge people have for observation and understanding and you have a potent mix for highly emotional drama, in which the best and worst of human nature competes for stakes that are both fantastic and accessible.

Detective stories and the Westerns dominated the early days of film, but tension surrounding two world wars gave legs to a new kind of genre film: The spy film, which began with Fritz Lang’s Spies in 1928, came into its own during the 1930s when Alfred Hitchcock began to make a number of films concerning what many call the world’s second oldest profession. The slew of combat dramas produced by the Second World War were ill-suited for the Colder, much more difficult to understand conflict that followed in its wake. The spy film became the only vehicle to explore the complex, deadly and worldwide game between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

But for all these grand notions of chronicling an era, the best spy films have always heavily relied on depicting some aspect of the emotional drudgery that accompanies the business itself. Like politics, spying is both awful and noble at the same time. It involves lying, manipulation and exploitation. It also serves the cause of truth – and fewer holier aims exist. As such, the best spy films are the ones in which an important unknown is chased by band of flawed individuals, each trying to get the best of the other.

Sounds a lot like life, doesn’t it?  

1. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

It is not often a great novel becomes a great film, but John le Carre’s classic tome is translated near-perfectly onto the screen in this 1965 film. Richard Burton plays British spy Alec Leamas, a cynical and hardened Cold Warrior who has just seen his entire network of operatives uncovered and executed by the East German Stasi. Sent home in disgrace, Leamas is quickly recruited for one last mission, one in which he is promised revenge against the German responsible for the death of his network. Leamas agrees and allows himself to be recruited by the other side in order to sow confusion there, but unknown to both him and the audience, a larger, more sinister game is being played and Leamas is nothing more than a pawn.

Who is playing who?

Shot in black-and-white, the film oozes atmosphere and functions almost as a film noir. The famous twist at the end, along with Leamas’s resigned decision to quit trying and “come in from the cold,” are unforeseen and haunting, as is Leamas’s dark assessment of his profession and its dehumanizing elements: “What do you think spies are? They are a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me, little drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands ...” Not to be missed.

2. Notorious

Hitchcock probably made more spy films than any other director. His best is 1946’s Notorious, one of his less well-known efforts. It is a beautiful picture, filmed in elegant settings with glamorous people. But set amongst this splendor is a gritty tale of espionage that captures the complicated relationship between a spy (Cary Grant) and his agent (Ingrid Bergman) better than any other film. Throughout, Grant coldly takes advantage of Bergman’s alcoholism and neuroses in order to get her to spy on an old boyfriend, a man associating with Nazis in Argentina who are up to no good.

Running an agent, cooly...

When the boyfriend (Claude Rains) proposes marriage to Bergman, Grant ignores his own feelings for her and pushes her into the arrangement, knowing it will enable her to feed him better information. The strain of a double-life – faking love and using sex to gain access to secrets – is delicately and expertly portrayed by Bergman. There are several wonderful sequences in the movie and an incredible amount of tension, but it is unabashed realism of Grant and Bergman’s partnership that stands out.

3. The Third Man

Not a straightforward spy film, but spies and espionage abound in this moody expose of post-war Vienna that explores the darkest extremes of human tendencies. Joseph Cotton plays a man who is summoned to work with a friend in the city and arrives to find him dead. Exactly what this friend did for a living and how he died are both shrouded in mystery. All of the people Cotton encounters in this distorted version of Vienna are more than what they initially seem and none of them want him to look too closely at what has happened. Beautifully filmed with a haunting soundtrack an incredible cameo by Orson Welles, this tale is chock full of seediness, intrigue and double-dealing, but we remember it ultimately for what it has to say about human nature and the lies people often tell themselves to excuse the things they do. For a full review of the film, click
here.

4. From Russia with Love

James Bond films do not depict espionage well. Bond is much too extroverted and his methods far too clumsy and action-oriented for real spooks, but not having an entry from perhaps the most famous spy in the world would make for a pretty poor list. Although it is not my favorite Bond, 1963’s From Russia with Love is certainly the best, in terms of plot and actual espionage. Free from the special effects, gadgets and spectacularly absurd antagonists that came to dominate the franchise (as well as make it so easy to parody), this outing sees 007 lured into a Cold War mission to acquire a code-machine under false pretenses.

Incredibly shapely women means it's a Bond flick...

In reality, the international terrorist group SPECTRE is dangling the machine in order to bring Bond into the open so the organization’s assassin can kill him. Along the way, 007 navigates through the nest of intrigue that is post-war Istanbul and encounters a KGB-trained honey pot sent to seduce him with the charms of her considerable body. It all ends in a delicious cat-and-mouse game between Bond and his assailant, an excellent chase scene and a frightening attack from a hag with a knife hidden in her shoe. Who could ask for more, really?

5. Where Eagles Dare

Another Richard Burton outing, this one supposedly filmed so his son could enjoy a “boy’s adventure” film about the War. As far as that goes, this 1968 effort does not disappoint. The 2 ½ hour running time sprints by, thanks to a delightful cacophony of quirky dialogue intermixed heavy doses of intrigue and machine gun fire, most of which is provided by a certain Clint Eastwood. The plot centers on a mission to rescue an American General being held captive in a mountain fortress by Nazis, but this is little more than a springboard for the whirlwind that follows.

Getting ready to kill Nazis

Given the high body count and action-oriented climax, some would call this a straight war film, but I am sticking with the spy genre. Burton’s real purpose for storming the aforementioned castle is to pull off a complex counterintelligence coup, only half of which makes sense the first time it is revealed. The end of the film sets the stage for more Burton/Eastwood sequels. My heart cries that none were made, although perhaps it is for the best. What we have here is pretty damn entertaining – and as I already suggested, it is not all lowbrow stuff, either. One of my favorite films, even if I know I should not revel in its simple complexity as much as I do. This is Indiana Jones meets James Bond and it is nearly perfect.

Strangers in Love

I could not have asked for a better venue to view Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion.

Knowing the American Film Institute is conducting a year-long retrospective of Hitchcock films, I traveled up to the AFI theater just outside Washington, D.C. and basked beneath its gilded ceiling. It is a beautiful facility. The old-time music piped through the sound-system and the grandiose, yesteryear style of the décor in the place make it perfect for the old black and whites.

So far was my experience from the usual megaplex, shopping mall variety that accompanies movie-going these days, I probably would have enjoyed anything projected on the screen in front of me that night. Fortunately, I did not have to struggle to find brilliance in some forgotten B-movie. Suspicion made for excellent Friday fare, even if I knew little about the movie before staking my entire night on its quality.

In this, I do not think I am alone. I am increasingly aware that there are quite a lot of Hitchcock films nobody seems to know anything about.

Partly, this is because the little boy who was afraid of the dark and then grew up into a rotund master of thrillers made 53 films. Hitchcock’s career spanned nearly six decades, and in that time, transitioned from silent films to “talkies” and from black and white images to color. And while it would be foolish to claim his legendary filmography contains unearthed “gems,” (because doesn’t everyone know about Hitchcock?), I do think it is safe to say his later work eclipsed many of his earlier, more character-driven pieces in terms of notoriety.

Suspicion fits nicely into the underappreciated cart.

Released in 1941, the film is shot in black and white and has virtually no special effects. The plot shuns external threats – such as giant robots or other people with firearms – in favor of following the odd courtship and even more bizarre marriage between Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. Grant is depicted as a lazy heel that shuns work and is forever borrowing money to maintain his lavish lifestyle, while Fontaine is an icy and overtly neurotic woman who was destined to become a spinster had she not met her eventual husband.

An unlikely couple meets on a train

Taken together, the two have little in common, beyond the fact they are attracted to one another and oddly balance out each other’s eccentricities. The essential drama in the picture revolves around whether or not it is possible for the couple to truly know their partner. Grant and Fontaine’s courtship is accidental and it quickly resolves itself in marriage before either they or the audience quite understand the gravity of what is occurring.

For the rest of the film, Grant attempts to conform to what he erroneously believes his wife wants while she neurotically obsesses about whether her husband is a criminal interested in killing her for her share of the family inheritance. Along the way, we learn that Grant is both a liar and a thief, but by the end of the picture, we are no closer to understanding the full truth about his intentions than his suspicious – and potentially disturbed – wife.

Part of this brilliant ambiguity lies in the film’s problematic production.

Hitchcock famously complained about how producer David O. Selznick meddled with Suspicion to Francois Truffaut. Essentially, Selznick forced Hitch to scrap an ending in which Grant was in fact a murderer and his wife bizarrely allows herself to be killed. Selznick believed nobody would buy an actor as debonair and charming Grant was a murderer – and he was right. The original ending, which stuck closer to the source material contained in the novel Before the Fact, bombed with test audiences, and thus Hitchcock’s exploration of the charming sociopath never materialized.

For the record, Truffaut also pointed out to Hitchcock that he was wrong about the ending, arguing that the film’s compromised screenplay is better than the novel because it is “less farfetched” and allows for far more “subtler nuances in the characterizations.” However, none of the three luminaries anticipated the response the 2011 audience I was a part of experienced.

Put simply, as the lights came up in the AFI Theater, none of us knew what to make of the movie’s conclusion, and the general consensus I overhead was that the film’s ending was intentionally ambiguous: That is, like Fontaine’s character, the audience is put in the position of choosing whether the self-confessed liar – Cary Grant – was telling the truth about whether he really was capable of murder. This, of course, is not what the filmmakers intended.

A doting husband with a milk? Or a murderer with Poison?

In terms of the script and its intentions, Grant is telling the truth at the end of the picture. He is not a murderer, and his wife’s suspicion is just that – suspicion. Per this reading of the film, Fontaine is a horribly neurotic character, plucked straight from the Victorian stories Hitchcock devoured as a child. Like the disturbed and unreliable female narrator in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Fontaine becomes unhinged by her own imagination and a complete lack of self-confidence. Unable to cope with and respond to reality as it actually is (her husband is a liar and a thief), she creates a much more horrible one (her husband is a murderer out to get her).

She does this, in part, because she is incapable of responding to the more prosaic truth. Overtly demure and largely passive, she functions in the film as a kind of female version of Hamlet, in that she is unable to process new information she learns about Grant and then act decisively. As is the case with the Danish Prince, this builds a palpable frustration among the audience, many of whom quietly yearn for her to cast out her wayward husband. However, such a positive act is clearly beyond Fontaine, who throughout the film acts only reactively. Indeed, she is uninterested in Grant’s courtship until she overhears her parents speculating that she will become a spinster. In response, she immediately kisses Grant, and within the next half hour of film, elopes and marries him.

The problem with viewing Fontaine’s subsequent suspicions as inaccurate is that the audience is given so much reason to believe her feelings are correct. Grant is revealed to be a fairly awful husband, as he is immature, possesses no work ethnic and at times seems unconcerned with his wife’s feelings. Worse still, Fontaine learns he is a perpetual liar, capable of cheating to acquire more money.

But does all this make him a murderer?

As the film progresses, the circumstantial evidence against Grant mounts, but at the same time, Fontaine’s reliability increasingly deteriorates. In one crucial scene, while she is playing a word game that resembles Scrabble, her subconscious directs her fingers to spell out the word “murder” in the presence of her husband and his best friend. From there, her mind easily leaps to a dream/fantasy of Grant pushing his friend from a nearby cliff. When it is subsequently revealed Grant did not kill his friend, Fontaine is overjoyed – but her suspicions return almost immediately with a new and more elaborate scheme (her own poisoning).

All of this is clearer to the audience upon the film’s completion.

During the movie's gradual progress (choosing a waltz as its theme is no accident), the audience is entirely in Fontaine’s sway and we believe what she believes, which is precisely what Hitch intended. That she is wrong at the picture’s conclusion makes us all her unwilling confederates. This is clever, but I think it obscures a deeper, and perhaps more disturbing, commentary on the two protagonists.

Throughout the film, the couple’s love for each other continually blinds them. The end result is that Hitchcock seems to be saying that no matter how much time two people spend together and no matter how close they become, they will never fully understand the inner psychological workings of the other person, even if they are man and wife. 

Will he or won't he?

How else can we explain that a woman could believe her husband is a murderer when everyone else around her does not?

This, I believe, is the overall theme one can take away from a film that teases the audience with delightful confusion and unimagined surprises: In matters of the mind, we largely remain strangers to one another, no matter how much in love we are. In that regard, the question about Grant’s true nature is as much as a litmus test for the audience memebers as anything else. Either you believe a woman could be that wrong about her husband or she knows him better than anyone else does. The choice is yours…