The Delightful Little Moneymaker

Most murders are solved.

The murder in 1954’s Dial M for Murder is no different.

By the film’s end, the audience has seen everything that happened, so the joy in this crime thriller is in arriving at the pre-destined conclusion intact. Along the way, there are a few bumps and hiccups and there is quite a bit of genuine tension, but the end product is about the crime and its results and if the film is saying anything here it is that there is no such thing as a perfect crime, even the complicated one concocted by Ray Milland’s desperately verbose husband in Dial M for Murder.

It is no secret Hitchcock disliked this film. He admitted to Francois Trufault that he made Dial M for Murder because it was simple and safe and he knew it would make bags of money he needed to finance other, more interesting films. Dial M for Murder was already a successful stage play when Hitchcock latched onto it and transferred it to the cinema. The degree to which that transition works is a large part of why this film remains enjoyable. Hitchcock said he resisted the temptation make the play “more cinematic,” opting instead to leave it virtually as it is on stage. Accordingly, virtually all of the film’s action occurs in one room.

 

A few other things here keep us interested here, but chief among them would be Milland’s excellent performance as the kind of cultured villain who would turn up again in North by Northwest. The other would be Grace Kelly, who simply is Grace Kelly. She made just three films with Hitchcock, this being the first, but she is just as good here as she is in Rear Window or To Catch a Thief, even if she has much less to do here because she is largely the unaware victim of her husband’s complicated machinations.

The other notable twist, preserved from the stage play I presume, is the decision to stick with the conniving husband as the film’s protagonist. This twist puts the audience in the odd position of seeing the film’s events almost entirely from the perspective of the culprit – not the victim. Thus, we know more than Kelly does about what is happening and the drama of the film becomes whether Kelly can figure out what the audience already knows, and in doing so, save herself from first death and then prison.

The film’s further success is down to the dialogue, which Trufault particularly liked. Put simply, this movie is a “talkie” and you have to listen to the dialogue very closely to keep track of the plot and attuned to who knows what, when. Very few films work this way anymore and perhaps more should. Dial M for Murder races by at almost breakneck speed and lurches the audience into caring – almost rooting – for the criminal before forcing moviegoers into Kelly’s corner near the end of the picture. And all of this largely through words and acting. A simple, fun moneymaker that stands up to multiple viewings largely on account of how fun it is to watch these people talk to, at and around one another.

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…

The Absent Catalyst

As far as first efforts go, one can hardly argue with Alfred Hitchcock's initial stateside film.

A dark and Gothic tale that clearly borders on the film noir, 1940's Rebecca would later be eclipsed by the great auteur's other, more richly imagined Hollywood efforts, but in terms of sheer craft and complexity, I rate this film as highly as any of Hitchcock's others. The only film from the great director that ever nabbed an Academy Award for best picture, Rebecca soars on the back of a remarkably tight script -- no scene or line of dialogue seems wasted here -- excellent cinematography and a pair of perfectly understated performances by Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

I confess I have not read the novel on which the film is based, but it would be difficult to imagine how it could equal the film's subtle portrayal of wickedness and possession, given that in certain scenes, Hitchcock paints the proverbial thousand words with merely the position of a shadow, the movement of the actors or the tone in which they speak. Atmosphere is everything in this film, and how could it not be? This is, after all, a film in which the title character who is the driver of the entire film's events is not even alive. Yes, you heard me correctly. Not even alive.

Nonetheless, "Rebecca," who is Olivier's deceased wife, has a power and allure whose attraction has outlived her death. Indeed, the film itself makes it clear that the hand of the dead can rest on the shoulders of the living, no matter how much the living wish it were otherwise. In Rebecca's case, the power stems almost entirely from perversion. Though she was known as a beautiful and successful socialite, Rebecca's inner self was dark, manipulative and cruel. Not only did she torment her husband, but the film makes it clear she toyed with several other lovers, to say nothing of people in general. Her chief ally in this comes in the form of Judith Anderson, who is not only the housekeeper on Olivier's estate, but also Rebecca's sole confidant. Anderson clearly enjoyed the games Rebecca played, and in her absence, she has devolved into a kind of priestess who worships at the memory of her former master.

Accordingly, Anderson is forever dressed in black. She is rarely shown walking, and in most scenes moves about the frame more like an apparition or wraith than a human. Her devotion to Rebecca is clearly suggested as homosexual, but in a completely unrealized sense. Instead of love, we have co-dependency base on shared sociopathic tendencies that delighted in the manipulation and destruction of others. Rebecca -- the extroverted half -- needed an audience for her twisted triumphs, Anderson -- the introverted half -- needed a idol to follow and give her life meaning. 

Such devotion, of course sets Anderson against Fontaine, Olivier's new wife. But more than that, Anderson is against Olivier, the last person to see Rebecca alive and the person whom Anderson correctly suspects of having something to do with Rebecca's death. Olivier, too, is hiding something and suffering from Rebecca's legacy. To free himself from Rebecca's trap he must both admit to himself what kind of person Rebecca was and acknowledge his role in first not stopping her and then in crudely confronting her and having an unwitting hand in her death (Olivier also believes he murdered an unborn child).

Fontaine, who arrives in Manderley with no understanding of the forces already at work there, must discover, along with the audience, who everyone is and what their role in the tragedy of Rebecca was. The interesting part of this is that every character has a piece of who Rebecca was, none of them have the whole. All of the characters are reluctant to share what they know and what they learn with one another, believing (correctly, as it turns out) that the whole of what they might assemble might not be something to linger in front of. And in fact when the pieces are finally put together for the audience to see, something frightening and wicked does appear.

Rebecca most certainly was a villain, but like most villains, she did not have to kill or behave crudely herself because there were plenty of people willing to either help her (Anderson) or abstain from stopping her until it was too late (Olivier). Manderley itself is haunted by the evil done there, and to show this Hitchcock brilliantly shoots the interior as if there is always water dancing on the walls, a direct reference to Rebecca's watery grave offshore, and to the fact that everyone remains waterlogged by what she left behind. Olivier and Fontaine must perpetuate the lies in order to seal their own marriage. Manderley itself cannot be saved and it burns to cleanse away what happened there (fire being the opposite of water). 

This would seem a neat ending to a haunting were it not for all the unanswered questions Hitchcock has asked in the course of the film's narrative. Specifically, although it seems Olivier and Fontaine had ended the "curse," if we can call it that, and made it as a couple (and mustn't all couples excise their pasts before truly bonding for life?) there remains the thorny issues of trust and truth. Specifically, Rebecca challenges its audiences to ask  whether people ever truly know each other and can trust one another? 

Hithcock, ever the puppet master, would return to this topic with some success in Suspicion. And both in this film and that one, he seems to be asserting the negative. That what we see of another person is but a gesture or a presentation (like a film) and all the while the realness of a person, if we can call it that, is their consciousness, something we can never truly know no matter how much time we spend with them or how many conversations of souls laid bare we have. Nobody in the film knew Rebecca, either. They had pieces of her and assembled they became something like the whole, but it was not quite the whole. Nobody, for example, could say why Rebecca did what she did or why they allowed themselves to fall under her power. Such questions are ultimately unanswerable, and such endings to films are truly what make them great.

Classic Date Night?

Why not?

I say forget paying in excess of $10 and then digging even deeper into your pocket for popcorn and candy and soda. Avoid the packs of boisterous teens, bleeping and chatting on cell phones as they snort and surge in restless herds around the contemporary cinema and the gluttonous shopping malls that tend to abut them. If you want to do dinner and a movie with that special someone, I urge you to go out to eat or prepare something nice at one of your home’s, then settle down on a sofa together for a classic movie. It will be cheaper and more rewarding.

In terms of quality, I can assure you, whichever classic film you watch will operate on a mental plain far beyond today's contemporary romantic comedies. The classic will eschew ribald humor, avoid obvious puns and leave a touch of mystery to sexuality and romantic encounters – through what the film does not say or does not show – that is both charming and refreshing. Couples actually had to court and communicate in classic movies because they could not make eyes across an ill-lit dance club, leave together after too many cocktails, peel their clothes off and “hook up” on screen (see Knocked Up et al).

However, I admit it can be difficult to know where to start if you want to do a Classic Date Night. Some people – amazingly and oddly enough – do not like classic films. Others adore classic films and either love or hate certain actors and actresses. And finding films that please both men and women is difficult no matter what era of movies we are talking about. So to help with all this, I offer up five films that are a perfect for any date-night scenario. These are classic crowd-pleasers that everyone should love, regardless of age and relationship status…



They will always have Paris...

 1. Casablanca

Still my favorite film and one that I believe is impossible to dislike. Humphrey Bogart is perfect as the savvy nightclub owner trying to escape from his past and Ingrid Bergman gives a delicately poised performance as the woman unwittingly at the center of a love triangle. Rooted in an incredible setting – Morocco in the early days of World War Two – and chock full of snappy dialogue and complicated moral conundrums, this is a film of many genres. Espionage, politics, war, adventure, romance and comedy – it is all in the film’s perfect screenplay, which is why every generation continues to rediscover this gem. Guys will enjoy this film because of Bogart – he is cynical, cool and forever one step ahead of everyone else – and the wartime setting that forces people in the film to make important decisions about what they stand for and what they are willing to sacrifice. The ladies will appreciate Bogey, too, but they also will swoon for the film’s romanticism and the notion of a joyful but tragic love affair that is hostage to a particular time and place. See immediately if you have not already done so. If you have, watch it again with a partner. As a shared experience, few movies can match it...

Stuck in the middle...

 2. Sabrina

Sometimes derided as a rather formulaic re-imaging of Cinderella, in which the servant girl falls in love with master of the manor, this film surpasses the limitations of its script thanks to the acumen of the actors involved and the skill with which they play off one another. Juxtaposition is, of course, a critical element of comedy, and it has never worked better on the screen than it does in the love triangle depicted here between Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart. The contrast between Hepburn’s smooth femininity and Bogart’s chapped masculinity works particular well, and as an audience, we completely believe these opposites ultimately attract. Guys will like this film because Bogart and Holden are both great and there is a very real examination of a man’s commitment to his family and the unfortunate tension between pursuing happiness in one’s private life and being successful in business. Ladies will enjoy Hepburn because she is Hepburn. The maturation of a young and immature girl who slavishly pursues the wrong man into a confident woman who chooses to be courted by the right kind of man also hits home. Sumptuously filmed, the movie leaves both sexes with the positive message that love is perhaps the only invigorating force capable of provoking radical positive changes within a person stuck in a rut.

Two gals gabbing, only one isn't a gal...

3. Some Like it Hot

A truly scandalous film for its day, Some Like it Hot is a bizarre comedy of errors that chronicles how a pair of friends and musicians –Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon – must disguise themselves as women in order to avoid being killed by powerful mobsters. Curtis and Lemmon excel as oddly paired friends who are barely able to keep up their disguise once they encounter a certain Marilyn Monroe. The hilarity that ensues when costume changes and forever-shifting stories are called upon to keep the cross-dressing ruse alive verges on wacky, but remains entertaining without drifting into hyperbole. And Curtis doing an intentionally stiff and obvious Cary Grant impression is particularly funny. That everyone in this film is confused about what they want and being misled about who the other characters truly are says something both sweet and ironic about the gamesmanship involved in courting. What – if anything – the film ultimately says about sexuality, I leave for others to decide. Guys will enjoy Monroe. She is sultry and sensationally lurid throughout – and her dresses barely contain her considerable body (has any other actress ever had her sexual presence?). Guys will also enjoy the film’s great humor and the witty repartee between Curtis and Lemmon. Ladies will enjoy Monroe’s unintentional humor and the film’s rollercoaster examination of just how far a man will go to flirt with a pretty woman.

Kelly convinces Stewart to pay attention

4. Rear Window

Most Alfred Hitchcock films make for great date movies, but this effort just beats out North by Northwest to top them all. I chose this because the mystery involving whether a man killed his wife is absolutely enthralling and watching it with someone else and dissecting the scenes is incredibly fun. More to the romantic point, this film – despite all of its loftier themes and tropes – is about a how a pair of opposites – Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly – work as a couple. In trying to unravel the picture’s mystery, the audience is afforded an incredibly intimate portrait of two people on the brink of marriage. That only one of them wants to get hitched and neither of the two realizes they are already verbally jousting like an old married couple is one of the film’s great charms. Guys will enjoy this movie because its plot addresses the notion of voyeurism – in particular, the male penchant for looking – and it forces the audience to consider what is normal and what is moral. The ladies will enjoy how Kelly floats almost ethereally across the screen in her scenes and how the film deals with nearly every aspect of love through the various depictions of the apartment complex’s residents. Both sexes will appreciate how cinematic the movie is, with its wonderful dialogue, its incredible set-pieces and the odd but ultimately tender take on courtship.

Tender mercies

5. It Happened One Night

This might be the hardest sell. For starters, it is difficult to find. For seconds, it has all the appearances of being the kind of old movie contemporary audiences avoid (it looks hokey, old and filmed with dubious quality). However, anyone who passes on this film is truly missing out. I first saw this in college in a film class and I can safely say the entire audience of 20-somethings was delighted. Since then, everyone I have shown the film to has responded with similar glee. It is, quite simply, a wonderful picture, full of warmth and charm. Clark Gable’s cynical newsman melts when he encounters naïve heiress Claudette Colbert. The guys will like this picture because Gable is masculine, believable and funny. The girls will enjoy Colbert’s emotional adventure: She runs away from a proscribed and boring existence, has an once-in-a-lifetime trip on the road and falls in love. Everything that Roman Holiday is, it owes to this film. Not to be missed.

To Banish Evil, One Must Choose Good

At first glance, Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt is an underwhelming film.

There is nothing in this 1943 effort that matches the director’s murderous shower scene, his flocks of deadly birds or the dramatic confrontation he staged on the stony precipice of Mount Rushmore. Perhaps this is why Pauline Kael wrote the film “isn’t as much fun” as the director’s more ostentatious efforts?

In spite of overt simplicity, Shadow of a Doubt is a remarkable film, one in which a frenzy of psychological activity quivers just beneath the surface and every scene is carefully crafted so that it enhances the greatness of the whole. Hitchcock himself said this is the best picture he made in America – and he may very well be right. So far as I can tell, everything in this film is working exactly as it should, and I can think of no other Hitchcock picture that deals with good and evil as frankly and as poignantly as this one.

It is very easy, of course, to depict evil in its most perverse and grandiose forms.

One need look no further than the James Bond franchise, with is deformed and egoistical madmen, each bent on annihilating something for nothing other reason than to enhance their own sense of self, to see what I am talking about. Nazism and its adherents is another Hollywood favorite – for who among us cannot sneer at the evil Germans and root for their failure? Real evil, the kind of criminal evil each of us stands a greater chance of encountering, is much more mundane, much harder to detect. In Shadow of a Doubt, evil does not lurch onto screen, ugly and scarred and cackling so we know to pay attention to it. Instead, it is quietly invited into the picture’s plot, and for a great deal of time, we are not even certain it is there.

Joseph Cotten as the banal killer.

The inevitable struggle that follows takes place largely inside the mind of Charlie Newton, the film’s youthful protagonist. At the beginning of the picture, Newton is bored with her life in idyllic Santa Rosa and yearns for excitement. In this, she is not alone. Charlie’s father and the family’s next door neighbor are working stiffs who seem incapable of engaging in anything like fun. The pair’s solitary flash of spontaneity and leisure comes when they engage in a macabre verbal game, in which they describe how they will kill each other and then fix it so the police never discover the crime. This foolishness, fired by an overconsumption of mystery novels, also serves to illustrate the innocence of existence in Eden-like Santa Rosa. Actual murderers, intent on committing real murders, could never dwell in such a tranquil place.

When word reaches Charlie’s family that Uncle Charlie is poised to pay an unexpected visit, everyone believes the pivot away from the mundane they were all looking for has finally arrived and life will perk up. The arrival of Uncle Charlie does indeed spice things up, but not in the way anyone intended. Charlie is secretly informed by two private investigators that Uncle Charlie is one of a handful of men suspected of being the “Merry Widow Murderer,” a serial killer who seduces, murders and then robs wealthy widows.

Ominous arrival.

At first, Charlie refuses to consider the idea. At work here is not only familial loyalty, but Charlie’s shared similarities with her uncle. Throughout the film, the two Charlie’s are presented as doppelgangers, in that both carry the same name, the same genes and seem to share a distinct unease with slow-paced suburban living. Uncle Charlie sees much of the same disquiet that drove him from Santa Rosa in his niece, while Charlie correspondingly views her Uncle as something of a sophisticated and well-traveled man of the world. If she shares the same personality as him, the same proclivities and tastes, then the fact her Uncle became a killer is a kind of indictment of her as well.

For his part, Uncle Charlie seems fairly harmless until he tips his hand at dinner one night with a rambling rant about widows being fat animals who deserve to be slaughtered. The remarks are completely shrugged off by the family, but Charlie knows exactly what her Uncle is talking about, and from that point on, the cat-and-mouse game played between the two becomes the film’s dramatic heart. But in order to best her Uncle, Charlie must fully open her eyes and shed her childish naiveté, a point her Uncle makes when he accuses her of being no different than the innocent townspeople in Santa Rosa:

"You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep, filled with peaceful stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares. Or did I? Or was it a silly, inexpert little lie? You live in a dream. You're a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?"

As I have already suggested, Charlie shares part of her Uncle’s unsettledness and therefore is less surprised by his shocking – but ultimately banal – turn to evil. Charlie is the lone character capable of understanding what the people of Santa Rosa cannot (the only other people in the film who know the truth about Uncle Charlie are detectives who come from the city). In this sense, the film is something of a Bildungsroman, in that Charlie leaves her childhood and matures into an adult during the film’s events. As Paul Duncan notes, she begins the film in a dress and ends the film in a suit. Along the way, she must face down disturbing truths and choose to follow her own nature (and in doing so, wind up like her Uncle) or reject it and help protect the innocent folks around her.

Two sides of the same coin...

That Charlie not only vanquishes the evil in everyone’s midst but then chooses to prevent their knowledge of it by never revealing her Uncle’s deeds is illustrative of both her ultimate choice and her commitment to it. Charlie has left childhood behind, faced the realities of the world and chosen to function as one of the often overlooked and underappreciated guardians who keep places like Santa Rosa free from harm: Good has triumphed over evil – and all because a girl had the strength to ignore her own inclinations and do what is right.

The power of the above is made even greater by this film’s subtle astuteness. There is no proselytizing, no blaze of holy glory. Accordingly, among the Hitchcock cannon, this gem should never be forgotten, overlooked or ignored in favor of its more flashy cousins. Watch it and be amazed. Then watch it again and be even more amazed at how much cleverer the entire enterprise becomes once you know what comes next. Like a well-made piano, all of the requisite parts here are expertly crafted and carefully assembled, so that when the plot calls for a particular key to be struck, the notes sing out, pitch-perfect and resonate for precisely the right amount of time.

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…