The Suspect

"The Suspect" is a taut suspenser, grandly acted by Charles Laughton and fine cast, and beautifully produced. But who can see it? Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the film was never brought out on video format. This comment is written to hopefully create some interest in helping to rectify this void. With all the less capable films on video, this is one omission which needs to be seriously addressed. ###

Unhappily married to bitter woman who refuses to divorce him, an aging Londoner is eventually driven to kill his wife; he succeeds in staging the death as an accident, but a rugged detective declines to let the matter go in this Robert Siodmak thriller. The film features some great directional touches, such as how Siodmak refrains from showing us the murder, instead leaving everything implied by the protagonist simply grabbing a cane and looking up a staircase in deep thought. What really makes the film work though is Charles Laughton's measured lead performance. Through the gentlest of eye movements and subtlest vocal inflections, Laughton manages to render his character so human and down-to-earth that it is easy to root for him throughout, even when he commits unspeakable acts. His battle of wits with the detective are very good too, with Laughton positioned to bluntly state "why don't you arrest me?" after being hounded so relentlessly by the policeman. The supporting cast is not quite up to Laughton's level, with Rosalind Ivan very one-note as his wife in a performance that only requires her to be shrill. The film is also rather slow to warm up with around half an hour elapsing before the murder. Once the film gets going though, it never lets up. It is simply enthralling to watch and the suggestive final shot provides a pitch perfect note for the film to end on.

An excellent domestic drama about a middle-aged man (Charles Laughton) who is trapped in an insufferable marriage. Laughton captures all the mannerisms of the situation, with a happy face for the neighbors masking his true torment. The story gets pushed along when he meets a younger woman (Ella Raines) and starts a relationship, which his devious wife (Rosalind Ivan) finds out about, sending him to the point of panic when she threatens him with social and financial ruin. The next door neighbor (Molly Lamont) is also trapped in an absysmal marriage to an alcoholic and abusive husband (Henry Daniell). One wonders why the writers didn't have Laughton and Lamont as the focus, as she's everything his wife isn't, instead of Raines. It would have saved the movie from becoming another police crime story. In any event, the chemistry seems to work pretty well, with Daniell and Ivan each in their own outstanding way supplying enough venom to propel the movie along, and Laughton excellent as a good man pushed into a corner.

This is one of my favourite Charles Laughton movies. Playing a mild mannered man, very much loved by his peers for his gentleness and kindness to all around him. The only problem is his home life. The mother of his only son is a sour, vicious, complaining woman who doesn't want anybody to be happy including herself. She drives her son away from the family home and finds out that her husband (even though he's not sharing the marital bed) is having romantic liaisons with a young woman who recently enquired about employment as a "typist" wasn't much heard of in 1902, the year in which this is set. I totally understand why he has to do what he has to do and not the deed itself. You'll see for yourself the dilemma he has to face and may understand why I feel what he has done isn't really that bad.

Unlike the grim dramas of Fritz Lang Edward G. Robinson played in (Scarlet Street and The Woman In the Window) Charles Laughtons' character of a genteel middle aged and middle class Englishman of the early 20th Century seems to be a figure of strength and solidity. The only thing to ruin this is a classic harridan of a wife at home. A loveless marriage that has produced a son the only point of agreement this couple has agreed to in the two decades + of this anchor on Mr. Marshall's soul. Then comes the heavenly disaster of love in the form of newly unemployed Ella Raines. No Joan Bennett sexpot/wench as in Woman In the Window,but a Good and proper English girl down on her luck who meets the kindly Mr. Marshall who at first is only doing the Good Deed that has earned him the respect of his neighborhood. But when you have the Nag from Hell(played to the nines by an icy shrewish Rosiland Ivans) and Henry Daniells as your pseudo-Gentleman stumblebum in the area Deep Trouble for the Good Man awaits. Add in Stanley Ridges performance as a Scotland Yard Inspector who Sherlock Holmes would respect as an equal,and you have a very distinct and classy journey down the Boulevard of Bad Choices for Good Reasons. Daniell's realization (too late)that Mr. Marshall has steel in his backbone is Movie Cool.