Hitchcock's Objects as Subjects by Marc Raymond Strauss

Author:Marc Raymond Strauss [Strauss_4308-6]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2016-01-07T16:00:00+00:00

Suspicion (1941)

As Joan Fontaine’s fingers arrange those letters into the word “Murder,” the camera places us in her position: They are our hands [Robin Wood, 1965, p. 25].

True, the glass of milk Johnnie carries up the stairs near the end of the film is an excellent and rightly noted example of an object projecting menace in Suspicion. But it is actually letters and, more specifically, the use of eyeglasses to read them are more important objects as subjects in this quirky, almost surrealistic little film. And, considering four out of five of the bright-magnitude actors in the movie are wasted and constrained by their inconsistent and unbelievable line readings—Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Dame May Witty, and Sir Cedric Hardwick—my perspective on this film runs contrary to many other critics. The Academy even gave Fontaine a Best Actress award here, which should have gone for her work in Rebecca the previous year, as her part in Suspicion is really the weaker one. In other words, it is easier to look for and find objects in this film that are empowered to play more interesting parts than many of the leads themselves. (Nigel Bruce, the fifth, briefly free from his bumbling but ever-lovable Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series, literally steals the film with his bumbling but endearingly charming Beaky Thwaite.)

Similar to how Juno and the Paycock begins and Foreign Correspondent ends, Suspicion starts in total darkness, so we do not know where we or even the two main protagonists are located. We do hear a disembodied voice say, “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t know anyone was here,” and it will turn out that knowing who each person really is will be a major theme of the film.

Interestingly, our first sequence with Fontaine’s Lina McLaidlaw makes us immediately wonder if we’re not back at Rebecca’s Manderley. Hitchcock gives us an extreme long shot of what could easily be the new Mrs. De Winter sitting and reading in a window seat dwarfed on the far side of a huge living room full of furnishings. Her character, as I stated, is very much the same as her earlier one the previous year—spinsterish, shy, and delicate.

In response to overhearing her father exclaim that he doesn’t think she will marry (“Lina has intellect and a fine solid character”), she impulsively kisses Cary Grant (as Johnnie Aysgarth) and runs into the house, giant cross-hatched shadows on its high walls hovering above her. In fact, spider web shadows in the great hall provide menace in a great many scenes throughout the picture, so much so that they are intended, I think, to take on a creepy, surreal life of their own.

In Lina’s favorite room, Johnnie speaks the truth to the words he puts in the mouth of a huge portrait of General McLaidlaw, a portrait that appears as often as the spider webs (or the jester in Blackmail). Speaking about himself and Lina, he says: “He can only bring her unhappiness. Warn her. Speak up, man, it is your last chance….

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