Rent Suspicion (1941)

B&W or Colour - Suspicion review by JD

A historic masterpiece. This 1941 film appears to be shot in B&W. You are however given the choice of watching in colour. The colours in some scenes are a bit surreal but generally good. Were all the frames individually coloured in? Wow. The plot is very delicately balanced. Is she paranoid or is he a ba***rd? You spend the whole film deciding. By today's standards it is a good film. By those of over 70 years ago it must have been impressive.

Very good but not the best - contains key spoilers - Suspicion review by CSF

A very good old fashion film by genious Hitchcock. Bearing in mind the story happened in 1941, it shows that Americans of the time were not very affected by the war in Europe. It takes place in London, so there should have been a mention of the war. The white cliffs of England look like a painting by Turner. Perhaps, in that case, the black and white would have been more realistic. For this part, Hitchcock should have chosen a woman not as beautiful as Joan Fontain but that was not Hollywood style. The film is like a tennis match: your mind looks at one character then the other one, almost at the same rythm as in a tennis match! It is love-love at the beginning and at the end.

Qualified success (spoiler). - Suspicion review by Steve

This is among of a few Alfred Hitchcock films made in a Hollywood studio but set in England, and with a predominantly British cast. It is a thriller from a novel by Francis Iles about a frumpish spinster (Joan Fontaine) who marries a dangerous sociopath (Cary Grant) and grows to fear for her life.

And that premise conceals a number of difficulties. In 1941, Fontaine was a very beautiful young woman and there is little about her character that is unappealing. And Grant was the great screwball star of the period, but a limited dramatic actor and his portrayal is idiotic.

But the main problem is derived from Hollywood star etiquette. The plot continually stretches plausibility until it eventually rips apart during a climax purely devised because RKO wouldn't let Cary Grant play a murderer. Still, despite these fundamental weaknesses, it's an entertaining film

This is mainly thanks to the Master's imaginative visual approach. It is shot in the emerging film noir style with its ominous house of shadows. Fontaine does her best and won the Oscar she deserved for Rebecca a year earlier, playing another vulnerable new wife. It's a flawed woman in peril thriller with a few nice moments of black comedy.