“One doesn’t direct Cary Grant, one just puts him in front of a camera.” Alfred Hitchcock, as quoted by film maker Peter Bogdanovich.
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“Suspicion” was made eons ago in 1941 and it’s black and white. Given its lackluster ending, it might be easily forgotten except for two people, Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock. Yes, Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for her role, and perhaps rightly so. It is through her talents that we understand this suspense story of a woman who marries a scoundrel and then begins to worry how bad a man he really might be.
But Hitchcock is the one skillfully playing with our heads, enticing us to try to figure out whether or not Fontaine is headed toward a bad end. And Grant as her scheming husband is a charmer in a class all his own. I’d rather watch him in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” or in the smart comedy “Philadelphia Story,” where Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart give him a run for his money. But I admit I’m a sucker for him on film. I grew up thinking he was the epitome of sophistication, and it seems too late to change my ways now.