The Suspect

Studio: Kino Lorber Studio Classics

Feb 26, 2021 Web Exclusive By Stephen Danay

Although it was made in America by Universal Studios, Robert Siodmak’s The Suspect gives a distinctly British feel to what was by 1945 already a classic noir set-up. Set in Edwardian London, it tells the story of Philip Marshall, a simple shopkeeper who is well-liked by his neighbors, employees and adult son. Unfortunately, his wife Cora is a spiteful, shrewish nag who seems to exist only to visit underserved torment on Philip. His routine endurance of her abuse is upset when Mary Gray enters his shop looking for work. After securing her employment, Philip takes a liking to the charming young woman and they strike up a friendship that slowly grows into a platonic affair. When Cora threatens to expose them, Philip makes a terrible decision that starts him down a dark path.

Film noir tends to conjure images of hard-eyed private detectives wielding revolvers and sultry femme fatales. While the form was well on its way to popularizing those tropes by 1945, several sub-genres had already begun to emerge involving variations on the classic structure of noir. One that seems to have been popular in the middle of the decade was the premise of a hapless, dull everyman who gets dragged into criminality, usually due to a woman. Fritz Lang directed back to back films with this exact premise - The Woman in the Window in 1944 and Scarlet Street in 1945 - both starring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. In The Suspect that role is filled by Charles Laughton, tamping down on his usual bluster to play Marshall as an emotional doormat, struggling to find his own happiness in a world that simply won’t allow it. It’s a charming and layered performance that does a lot of heavy lifting in maintaining the audiences’ sympathy toward a character who all but certainly committed a terrible crime.

Robert Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in the 1930s in the wave of European filmmakers fleeing the rise of Nazi Germany. He would go on to direct several high-water marks of the film noir cycle, notably The Killers in 1946 and Criss Cross in 1948. Although The Suspect is a period piece, its depiction of the sordid rot below the surface of respectable society is pure noir. With its’ “how will he get away with it’ plotting and suspense sequences built around the hiding and recovering of crucial evidence, the film feels very much in line with Hitchcock’s various “wrong man” films. The twist here, of course, is that the “wrong man” protagonist of The Suspect is almost certainly guilty.

Something that both assists the audience in rooting for a guilty protagonist is the sense of romanticism that Siodmak brings to an otherwise grim crime picture. Similar to his other noir films, Siodmak anchors his tale of deception and murder in a very genuine relationship between two likable people. There’s a variety of reasons that the relationship between Philip Marshall and Mary Gray is improper - their age difference, his marriage status, the fact that he’s not being truthful with her - but Siodmak and his actors sell it well enough that the audience wants their happiness to succeed. Ella Raines - who starred in Siodmak’s 1944 film The Phantom Lady - makes Mary her own person with opinions and desires beyond her relationship with Philip and her chemistry with Laughton is both charming and believable. Ultimately, the success of their relationship is the true stakes of the film, which makes the moral choice Marshall is forced to make in the films closing moments all the more poignant.

(www.kinolorber.com/product/the-suspect-blu-ray)

Comments