Suspicion (1941), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Watershed, 1 Canon’s Rd, Bristol BS1 5TX
Saturday 24 November 2018, 11:30am
Tickets: £8/£5 Concessions
Offer: £2 off for double bill with preceding event on Hitchcock and Cary Grant.
THIS EVENT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1hr 35mins
Don’t miss this opportunity to see Hitchcock’s assured romantic thriller, Suspicion, on the big screen, Hitchcock’s first collaboration with Cary Grant, “the only actor that he ever loved” and one that led to an enduring collaboration spanning nearly twenty years. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Cary Grant experts Mark Glancy and Kathrina Glitre, chaired by Matthew Sweet.
Joan Fontaine plays the repressed Lina McLaidlaw, a wealthy spinster who falls for Cary Grant’s charming but irresponsible playboy, Johnnie Aysgarth, when he attempts to sit in the First Class train carriage with his Third Class ticket.
Following a whirlwind romance Johnnie convinces her to elope, and it’s only after their expensive honeymoon she discovers that he is not all he seems. In fact Johnnie is an indebted gambler who attempts to mask his addiction with charm. How far will he go to end his financial troubles?
When his business partner Beaky turns up mysteriously dead, Lina suspects Johnnie may have murdered him and fears that she might be next. Grant plays Johnnie with a subtle ambiguity which keeps you in suspense right until the very end of the movie. Is he, isn’t he?
The first collaboration between Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock, “the only actor that he ever loved,” Suspicion marks a shift in Cary Grant’s acting career – Hitchcock recognised something dark simmering underneath the smooth, suave surface of Grant’s carefully crafted persona. These themes will be explored in the preceding event on Hitchcock and Cary Grant.
“Hitchcock’s remarkable finesse is in momentarily convincing audiences that matinee idol Grant could indeed wind up to be a murderer” (Felicia Feaster, TCM)
Joan Fontaine won the Oscar for Best Actress in 1941 – the only Hitchcock performance to win an Academy Award, having been nominated for Rebecca, the Hitchcock picture which catapulted her to fame.
The film’s controversial ending caused consternation for some critics, and Hitchcock himself is rumoured to have been pressured by RKO studios to tone down Cary Grant’s sinister portrayal, but the master of suspense truly leaves you guessing in this classic romantic thriller.
“Hitch’ epitomizes his title in a spine-tingler — literally! —- about a wife who suspects her husband Cary Grant of having murderous designs on her. The ending, one of many shot, has been criticized as abrupt. That, I think, is what makes it effective.” (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 12, 1941)
Read more on IMDb.com
Contributors
Mark Glancy is Reader in Film History at Queen Mary University of London. His book, Cary Grant: The Making of a Hollywood Legend, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2020. He was editorial consultant on Becoming Cary Grant (Yuzu Productions, 2017), and he has written articles about Grant’s career for The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz (Palmer & Pomerance, eds) and London on Film (Hirsch & O’Rourke, eds). His other publications include Hollywood & the Americanization of Britain, From the 1920s to the Present (Tauris, 2014), The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide (Tauris, 2003), When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939-45 (Manchester University Press, 1999), and, as co-editor with James Chapman and Sue Harper, The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches (Palgrave, 2007).
Kathrina Glitre is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. She likes to credit her career to Cary Grant, since he inspired the PhD research which lead to her first book, Hollywood Romantic Comedy: States of the Union (Manchester University Press, 2006). She is currently working on a project on screen acting, including essays on ‘Cary Grant: Acting style and genre in classical Hollywood cinema’ (2012) and ‘Character and the star vehicle: The impact of casting Cary Grant’ (forthcoming). Occasionally, she manages to write about other things too, including a chapter on colour for Neo-Noir (Wallflower Press, 2009), which she also co-edited. @UWEfilmculture
Matthew Sweet is author of Inventing the Victorians (2001), Shepperton Babylon (2005) and The West End Front (2011). A familiar voice in British broadcasting, he presents Free Thinking and Sound of Cinema on BBC Radio 3 and The Philosopher’s Arms on BBC Radio 4. He has judged the Costa Book Award, edited The Woman in White for Penguin Classics and was Series Consultant on the Showtime/Sky Atlantic series Penny Dreadful. In the BBC2 drama An Adventure in Space and Time he played a moth from the planet Vortis. His most recent book Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers and Themselves (2018) is published by Picador. @DrMatthewSweet
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Celebrating Bristol’s recent designation as a UNESCO City of Film, in recognition of the city’s vibrant screen heritage, of which Cary Grant is one of our brightest stars.