Suspicion (film) - Production

Production

In places, the screenplay of Suspicion faithfully follows the plot of the novel. There are, however, a number of major differences between the novel and its film version. For example, all references to Johnnie Aysgarth's infidelity were removed. In the first days of Johnnie's "courtship," while the couple are driving through the countryside in Lina's car ("Have you ever been kissed in a car?"), she asks him how many women he has had and he gives a humorous rather than really evasive answer: saying that he had so many that he once counted them like sheep to get to sleep. (Even back in the early 1940s, however, this was accepted, or at least tolerated, male behaviour, especially of a man who was considered a playboy. Much is left open for the cinema-goer to decide: Did he actually sleep with any, some, or all of them? Or did he only kiss them?) The crime of adultery, on the other hand, is altogether left out in the film plot: Lina's best friend doesn't appear at all, and Ella, their maid, certainly doesn't have an illegitimate son by Johnnie. Sex is not made an issue.

Suspicion is one of the famous examples where, in the process of rewriting the novel for the big screen, the plot was tampered with to an extent that Iles's original intention was completely reversed. As William L. De Andrea states in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994), Suspicion "was supposed to be the study of a murder as seen through the eyes of the eventual victim. However, because Cary Grant was to be the killer and Joan Fontaine the person killed, the studio — RKO — decreed a different ending, which Hitchcock supplied and then spent the rest of his life complaining about."

Hitchcock was quoted as saying that he was forced to alter the ending of the movie. He wanted an ending similar to the climax of the novel, but the studio, more concerned with Cary Grant's "heroic" image, insisted that it be changed. Writer Donald Spoto, in his biography of Hitchcock The Dark Side Of Genius, disputes Hitchcock's claim to have been overruled on the film's ending. Spoto claims that the first RKO treatment and memos between Hitchcock and the studio show that Hitchcock emphatically desired to make a film about a woman's fantasy life.

As in the novel, General McLaidlaw opposes his daughter's marriage to Johnnie Aysgarth. In both versions, Johnnie freely admits that he would not mind the general's death because he expects Lina to inherit quite a substantial fortune, which would solve their (i.e. his) financial problems. The book, however, is much darker, with Johnnie egging on the general to exert himself to the point where he collapses and dies. In the film, General McLaidlaw's death is only reported, and Johnnie is not involved at all. Again, Johnnie's criminal record remains incomplete.

There are several scenes in the film which create suspense and sow doubt as to Johnnie's intentions: Beaky's death in Paris was due to an allergy to brandy which Johnnie knew about and a waiter, who barely knows English, gives the police names that sound like "Old Bean", the way Beaky would call Johnnie. At the end of the film, Johnnie is driving his wife at breakneck speed to her mother's. This scene, which takes place after her (final) illness, is not in the book. The biggest difference is the ending. In Iles' novel, Johnnie serves his sick wife a drink which she knows is poisoned. Nevertheless she gulps it down. In the film, it can be seen untouched the following morning. (By placing a lightbulb in the milk, the filmmakers made the contents appear to glow as the glass is carried upstairs by Johnnie, further enhancing the audience's fear that it is poisoned.)

Another ending was considered but not used, in which Lina is writing a letter to her mother stating that she fears Johnnie is going to poison her, at which point he walks in with the milk. She finishes the letter, seals and stamps an envelope, asks Johnnie to mail the letter, then drinks the milk. The final shot would have shown him leaving the house and dropping into a mailbox the letter which incriminates him. Hitchcock's recollection of this original ending -- in his book-length interview with François Truffaut, published in English as Hitchcock/Truffaut in 1967 -- is that Lina's letter tells her mother she knows that Johnnie is killing her, but that she loves him too much to care.

A musical leitmotif is introduced in Suspicion. Whenever Lina is happy with Johnny — starting with a ball organised by General McLaidlaw — Johann Strauss's waltz "Wiener Blut" is played in its original, light-hearted version. At one point, when she is suspicious of her husband, a threatening, minor key version of the waltz is employed, metamorphosing into the full and happy version after the suspense has been lifted. At another, Johnny is whistling the waltz. At yet another, while Johnny is serving the drink of milk, a sad version of "Wiener Blut" is played again.

A visual threat is inserted when Lina suspects her husband of preparing to kill Beaky Thwaite: On the night before, at the Aysgarths' home, they play anagrams, and suddenly, by exchanging a letter, Lina has changed "mudder" into "murder". Seeing the word, Lina imagines the cliffs Johnny and Beaky told her they will inspect for a real estate venture the next morning, and faints.

In the end, when it turns out that, for all his faults, Johnny is no murderer, the film version becomes a powerful cautionary tale in its own right about the dangers of groundless suspicion based only on assumed, incomplete, and circumstantial evidence.