The Gap Theatre - Wind Gap, PA
This Wednesday, The Gap Theatre served up an appetizer for what we all hope is the first annual Alfred Hitchcock weekend at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater with a 35mm screening of the 1941 film noir classic: Suspicion.
This Wednesday, The Gap Theatre served up an appetizer for what we all hope is the first annual Alfred Hitchcock weekend at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater with a 35mm screening of the 1941 film noir classic: Suspicion.
Suspicion premiered on November 14th, 1941. It tells the story of a young woman named Lina (played by Joan Fontaine) who comes from a wealthy family with parents who believe that she'll grow old as a spinster. She meets and falls in love with Johnnie (played by Cary Grant), who is equal parts charming and dishonest. It's only after the two get married and go on a honeymoon world tour that Lina learns that her husband has no job, no money, a gambling addiction, and has borrowed money that he has no ability, and possibly no intention, to pay back. She catches him in numerous lies, any one of which would result in an immediate divorce a few decades after this film was made, and she is given reason to suspect that he is a murderer who is plotting her death.
It's an excellent film with a performance from Joan Fontaine for which she won Best Actress at the 14th Academy Awards. This ended up being the only acting performance that earned an Oscar in any of Hitchcock's films.
This was my first time seeing Suspicion. I went into the theater as a completely blank slate with no knowledge of the plot whatsoever. Experiences like this never cease to amaze me. It's 2025, and I got to sit in a movie theater that opened three years after the end of World War II and watch a 35mm print of an Alfred Hitchcock film that was released 84 years ago that was absolutely new to me in every way. The only thing I knew about it was what you could tell from the poster. For the 99 minutes that this movie is on the screen, you are as close to time travel as you can get.
I thought it was an incredible movie. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the ending, which I found to be overly forgiving and borderline schmaltzy. After the credits rolled, I learned that Hitchcock wanted to end the movie in a much different way that was closer to the novel on which the screenplay was based, but studio meddling from RKO Pictures forced him to go in a different direction to protect the image of their stars. It's really a shame, because the final scene that Hitchcock wanted to film would have made this a much more memorable film.
Suspicion is currently available to stream with a Hulu subscription. As always, my recommendation is that you go into this with as little knowledge about the plot as possible. Don't look up the synopsis. Don't even read the summary on Hulu. Hell, I already told you too much about it here. Even if the ending isn't as good as what the director had in mind, it's still a great film that is well worth watching today.
