Suspense

My God, Bosley Crowther's an idiot. The one thing in this good noir from scenarist Phil Yordan and director Frank Tuttle that the former New York Times critic liked, namely the ice skating stuff, is the one thing in the film that is truly ordinary. Everything else is either better than expected (i.e. Belita's acting) or fairly compelling (i.e. Barry Sullivan and Eugene Palette's performances). And while the film did not, ironically, contain much suspense it had plentiful supplies of darkness and disturbance courtesy of Yordan's terse dialogue and Tuttle's three AM of the soul direction. Indeed, the general Woolrichian look and feel of the film has caused me to want to view more of this unknown director's work (only film of his that I can recall viewing is "This Gun For Hire" with Ladd/Lake, which I also liked). Give it a B.

PS...Wonder why Barry Sullivan never made it (in movies, that is) while less talented contemporaries with the same look, like Stack, Mature and Wilde, did?

It's hard living up to such a broad yet existential title as SUSPENSE; but the very beginning does it perfectly... albeit lasting only several seconds as an armed woman, flanked by two goons, aims her pistol at a ratty-looking fella, and then fires... hitting a target and winning the teddy bear prize, handed over by her "victim" working the stand...

Who then gives homeless-looking loser Barry Sullivan's Joe Morgan directions to an ice skating rink/auditorium... and what follows are the best sequences as Sullivan talks his way from being a popcorn vendor to security guard to practically running the show by making it more dangerous and thus... suspenseful...

Of course being a Noir he soon falls head-over-heels for a taken woman, and that's where real life ice skating champ Belita, married to the always-menacing Albert Dekker, comes in... she's the showcase star and he's the wealthy, enigmatic owner... and we eventually learn that Sullivan's quick climb was for reasons other than his fast-talking charm...

A shame since his character needed more spontaneous con artistry since, once he and Belita realize they're both equally smitten with each other... despite her husband's deadly intentions and a shady dame from the past (Bonita Gransville)... SUSPENSE, directed by THIS GUN FOR HIRE Frank Tuttle, in becoming a full-blown sport-propaganda/romantic melodrama, leaves those initial crime-genre origins on ice.

The was the biggest budget film ever for Monogram Pictures and it is evident in this very well produced nightclub noir from 1946. British skating star known as BELITA was the queen of Monogram for a few years and the money spent on her 40s musicals LADY LET'S DANCE and SILVER SKATES proved what an asset she truly was. The reviews for LADY famously declared: "Mega budget time on poverty row" - with half a dozen extravagant big band music sequences with herself zipping about in all sorts of incredible costumes. SUSPENSE made in '46 is almost the same story as GILDA made the same year at Columbia. However Rita couldn't skate and Belita wasn't Rita. but, in it's own way SUSPENSE is an excellent thriller with some of the most bizarre and creepy scenes I have seen in a 40s noir drama. The best of which actually occurs in a dance-skate number which I can only describe as: set imagery from Salvador Dali mixed with a quite obvious S&M costume design (spangly scimitars on Belita's bosom, black hot-pants, cape and stockings (!) and a horror stunt involving a doorway of jagged wiggly iron swords (yes the jaws of death) that our gorgeous lead actress must skate towards and jump through..... backwards! All to a pulsating kettledrum gonging away. Imagine being in the front row for that! Producers, King Bros were rewarded at Monogram by massive ($4m+) USA rentals from DILLINGER in 1945 and the head office put up a handsome budget for this film. It cost $1.1m, a record spend for Monogram and put the studio in the A league for a while. Following a stream of noir successes like THE GANGSTER Monogram stepped up a few rungs on the Hollywood ladder and changed their name to ALLIED ARTISTS. They used these strong profits to make IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE, FRIENDLY PERSUASION in '56 and in the 70s, went on to produce CABARET and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. The skating dance shows in SUSPENSE are very spectacular and it is a quite a surprise how big and crowded the nightclub sets are. the penthouse scenes are 10 years ahead of Forbidden Planet in their snazzy moderne style. This is a good film, unjustly neglected. And Belita deserves to be rediscovered before she skates off into the sunset: apart from being a genuine astonishing beauty, she can act, skate and give lip service in that most attractive slovenly way that saw Bacall snare Bogey. Belita can do that and skate too. What a doll! For fans of all things kitsch, the nightclub is the same one seen in 1980 in XANADU ooooooo-h-oooo.

Super-aggressive Joe Morgan tries to take over impresario Frank Leonard's ice show and his girl, for good measure, resulting in some strange consequences.

With all the interest in 40's noir, I'm not sure why this genuinely exotic little number is too often overlooked. Maybe it's because its pedigree is not the best, (cheap-jack Monogram), or because its cast is non-movie star, (Sullivan, Belita, Dekker), or the fact that it doesn't turn up on cable (to my knowledge). Nonetheless, in my book it's one of the best examples around of the lost art of b&w cinematography.

Consider, for example, what Belita's surreal, death-defying skating number would look like in color, or that distance shot of the noirish mountain bowl where Frank stalks his prey, or the big neon panel blinking through the fog. In fact, consider the values that would be lost if the entire film were in color. I think one reason many of us return to 40's noir is because of those dream-like shadings,(among other values), that simply can't be duplicated in reds and greens, etc. Then too, these b&w shadings are a perfect complement to the ambiguities pervading the best noir.

But it's not only the photography in this movie, it's also the art direction (Paul Sylos) and the set decoration (George Hopkins). Thanks to them, the spooky ice rink plus the cavernous apartment and lodge interiors achieve real visual distinction with their attention to artistic detail. And even after multiple viewings, I haven't figured out how they did that eerie mountain bowl with its rink at the bottom. That tableau remains unlike anything I've seen in film. All in all, these elements add up, in my book, to a superior slice of visual exotica from noir's golden age.

To me, the most notable part of the story itself is how basically unsympathetic Joe (Sullivan) is with his overweening aggressiveness as he cuts in on everything Frank (Dekker) owns or values. At the same time, I don't buy the climax that looks like some version of the Hollywood Code in action, even if only in diluted form. Nonetheless, it's a great cast from the gimlet-eyed Sullivan (he doesn't look like anyone else in movies) to the commanding Dekker to the froggishly likable Palette. And must not forget Belita's eye-catching wardrobe or the deglamorized Granville getting jilted every five-minutes. And please tell me when ace screen-writer Yordan ever drew a breath away from the typewriter since his name pops up on just about everything from this period.

Anyhow, in my book, the movie remains a real sleeper and visual treat, and TMC would do well to slip it somewhere into their evening schedule.

When a young Olympic figure skater decides to take up acting, it had to be with some skating sequences. While these were somewhat entertaining, they make the film about ten minutes longer. Since the title is "Suspense," this detracts a bit. Still it has many noir qualities with the taciturn Barry Sullivan pretty much running things. it is a romantic triangle where the third is one too many. Actually, a fourth comes into playas well. Joe, Sullivan's character, has significant baggage. Would this have brought him down eventually? Anyway, it was some fun with reasonable good acting by most of the figures.