Classic Films in Focus: THE SUSPECT (1944)

Warning: This review contains spoilers for The Suspect (1944).

Director Robert Siodmak weaves Victorian sensibility with noir energy in the justifiable homicide story of The Suspect (1944), which sees a mild-mannered Charles Laughton driven to murder by his extremely disagreeable wife. It's an unusual tale in that it pitches our sympathies toward the murderer throughout, even though we know the Hays Code won't let the picture - or its protagonist - get away with the crimes. Laughton, equally adept at comedic and horror roles, here plays an amiable working man who never stops being likable even as the corpses pile up. Ella Raines gives a sweet performance as the young woman whose affection ironically plunges the protagonist into violence, while Rosalind Ivan and Henry Daniell are delightfully horrible as the two antagonists who threaten him to their peril.

Laughton stars as Philip Marshall, a pleasant middle-aged man who manages a cigar store and does his best to placate the wrath of his hectoring, hateful wife, Cora (Rosalind Ivan). After Cora drives away their son, Philip takes comfort in a new friendship with pretty, young Mary (Ella Raines), but his hopes for a second chance at happiness are dashed when Cora refuses to give him a divorce. Cora's threat to ruin both of the lovers by publicly exposing them proves too much for Philip, but his snap decision to take drastic action has unexpected effects, especially when his abusive, alcoholic neighbor, Mr. Simmons (Henry Daniell), sees an opportunity for blackmail.

The success of this picture relies very much on Laughton's ability to play a truly kind, sympathetic man who is also believably capable of outright murder. Philip Marshall is no smiling sociopath like Joseph Cotten's character in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), nor is he incompetent once he commits to the deed. It helps that Cora and Mr. Simmons are so thoroughly rotten that even a saint might be forgiven for wishing them dead. Cora is unhinged enough that she doesn't seem to realize or care that ruining Philip's career would put her in the poorhouse, too; she means to torment him until death do them part. The revelation that Mr. Simmons beats his long-suffering wife (Molly Lamont) makes Philip and the audience hate him long before the blackmail attempt, as ironic as that seems when we consider that Mr. Simmons doesn't actually murder his wife. The Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges), enters this story as a most unwelcome pest; he's determined to prove Philip's guilt but doesn't care at all about the circumstances or the consequences. He might not be a corrupt cop, but he's willing to tell lies, set traps, and ruin lives without a moment's hesitation because he believes in his own moral superiority.

Touches of romance and comedy constantly lighten the mood to remind us of Philip's essential decency and the happiness he and Mary might enjoy if only fate would deal them a better hand, but there are fully realized moments of thrilling noir tension, too. Some of the sweetest scenes feature Raymond Severn as the errand boy, Merridew, whom Philip treats with paternal affection. The mix of moods also leads to black comedy, including a perversely entertaining sequence where Philip attempts to hide a body behind a couch while also entertaining unexpected guests. Laughton carries all of it beautifully, even the tenderest scenes with Raines, which might easily be rendered ridiculous by the difference in their ages and Laughton's cherubic curls atop a round, sad face. The ending might not offer what the audience really wants, but it's as gentle as possible given the inevitable conclusion to Philip's experience, and it leaves some poignant questions hanging in the air. Can you forgive a murderer depending on who they murder and why? How does that change the nature of justice and who gets it? What does the end of the story mean for Mary, or Mrs. Simmons, or Philip's adult son, John? The Suspect is the kind of murder story that begs for group viewing and discussion.

Robert Siodmak's other films from the 1940s include classics like Phantom Lady (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1946), and The Killers (1946). Charles Laughton won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and was nominated again for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957), but be sure to see him in Hobson's Choice (1954), too. Ella Raines also stars in Phantom Lady, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), The Web (1947), and Brute Force (1947). If you like mild-mannered men embroiled in murder, pair The Suspect with The Woman in the Window (1944) or Scarlet Street (1945), both starring Edward G. Robinson.

Classic Films in Focus: THE BODY SNATCHER (1945)

Adapted from a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Body Snatcher (1945) is yet another example of producer Val Lewton’s genius for turning out elegant, literate horrors on a shoestring budget. This period tale of grave robbers in 19th-century Scotland benefits from the direction of Lewton protegee Robert Wise and the presence of genre icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, but the psychological effect of The Body Snatcher also hinges on a particularly memorable performance from Henry Daniell as a physician whose Faustian bargain with the resurrection man brings about his own undoing. Like most of the Lewton films for the RKO horror unit, The Body Snatcher eschews gore to revel in suggestion, but there is no shortage of unseen awfulness to stir the dark corners of the viewer’s imagination.

Karloff plays the title character, Cabman Gray, who drives a carriage for hire when he isn’t digging up corpses. Gray’s chief client is Dr. McFarlane (Henry Daniell), who loathes Gray but has too much history with him to escape the body snatcher’s power. When McFarlane takes on medical student Fettes (Russell Wade) as his assistant, he draws the young man into the dark side of Victorian medicine and exposes him to Gray’s machinations. Soon Gray begins providing corpses for McFarlane without waiting for them to die of natural causes, and McFarlane realizes that only one course of action will ever release him from Gray’s relentless grip.

Karloff and Daniell dominate the screen as two men who both hate and need one another, tied together by a past that evokes the lurid history of the notorious real life Edinburgh murderers Burke and Hare. Karloff plays Gray as a smiling villain who uses his friendly, obsequious manner to pacify his victims and disarm his enemies, which makes his outbursts of violence all the more shocking. Early in the film, he brutally kills a faithful little dog guarding its young master’s grave, so we understand the sort of outrageous cruelty of which he is capable. His opposite is Daniell’s McFarlane, mockingly called “Toddy” by Gray, who cannot smile even at those he really cares about, including his housekeeper, Meg (Edith Atwater), who is also secretly his wife. Gray is utterly, even gleefully, evil, while McFarlane is a man whose better nature has been corrupted by his involvement with the body snatcher’s trade.

The rest of the characters serve to react to the two protagonists and their ongoing conflict. Russell Wade, handsome but rather bland as Donald Fettes, must avoid repeating his teacher’s fate, and he also provides a muted romantic subplot with an attractive widow (Rita Corday) who has brought her crippled daughter (Sharyn Moffett) for treatment by Dr. McFarlane. The little girl, Georgina, adds some sentiment to the story with her plight, but she also brings irony in her childish obsession with Gray’s white horse, which otherwise functions as a symbol of death. Edith Atwater plays Meg to great effect, investing her with tragic resignation to the fate of the man she loves. Lugosi, oddly enough, has only a few scenes as Joseph, McFarlane’s servant, but his presence pays off with an opportunity to see him and Karloff together in one memorable, violent meeting.

Be sure to appreciate the beautiful singing voice and chilling fate of Donna Lee as the blind street girl, whose encounter with Gray is a quintessential moment of Lewton horror. For another collaboration between Val Lewton and Robert Wise, see Curse of the Cat People (1944), or try The Haunting (1963) for Wise’s most famous work in the horror genre. Karloff and Lugosi can be found in many Universal horror films both separately and together; see both of them in The Black Cat (1934), The Invisible Ray (1936), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). Career villain Henry Daniell has more memorable roles in The Sea Hawk (1940), The Great Dictator (1940), and Jane Eyre (1943); although not primarily a horror actor, Daniell did return to the genre for several episodes of the Boris Karloff television series, Thriller. For different tales of the resurrection men and their ghastly work, you might try more recent pictures like I Sell the Dead (2008) and Burke and Hare (2010), but it's also a frequent theme in the series of Frankenstein films.

Classic Films in Focus: THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)

We think of Charlie Chaplin as a silent comedian, but he also made a number of talkies in his later career, the best known of which is The Great Dictator (1940), which offers a direct response to the global catastrophe then brewing on the European front. In this picture, made before the United States actually entered the war against Hitler, Chaplin demonstrates the courage of his convictions as well as his ability to pull off a fully realized speaking role. Some critics, including David Thomson, find fault with the idealistic speech that Chaplin delivers at the film’s climax, but people around the world must have responded to it enthusiastically in 1940, with that feeling of being on a terrible precipice that Chaplin so passionately captures. Today, those who appreciate the bravery in Chaplin’s cinematic statement will still find The Great Dictator powerful stuff, and film fans will also enjoy the performances of Chaplin himself as well as Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell, and Billy Gilbert.

Chaplin plays dual roles as a meek Jewish barber and the dictator Adenoid Hynkel, the ruler of a fictional country obviously meant to represent Nazi Germany. The barber, shell-shocked from his service in the previous war, emerges from a mental hospital to find his community under siege from Hynkel’s brutal stormtroopers and mounting violence. Hannah (Paulette Goddard), an orphaned Jewish girl, takes pity on the barber and even comes to love him, while a military officer (Reginald Gardiner) whose life the barber once saved draws him and his neighbors into a dangerous plan to end Hynkel’s tyranny. As the barber and his friends confront one hardship after another, Hynkel himself schemes against his fellow dictator, Napaloni (Jack Oakie), and aspires to world domination.

Of course the plot eventually involves the barber being mistaken for Hynkel, but that switch occurs very late in the picture. Until then, we move back and forth between Hynkel’s actions in his lavish palace and the barber’s sufferings in the Jewish ghetto. Both have their moments of comedy and drama, although Hynkel is played mostly as a buffoon, with Henry Daniell’s insidious Garbitsch as the evil mind behind the worst atrocities committed in Hynkel’s name. The barber, showing his affinity with Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, mostly runs from the troopers and engages in slapstick combat; he has no delusions of heroism but is pushed and buffeted by fate toward his climactic moment in the spotlight. Hynkel’s best scenes pit him against his rival, Napaloni, whose friendly manner of bullying the smaller dictator incenses Hynkel and drives him to increasingly extreme antics. The film’s most memorable moment, aside from the final speech, is Hynkel’s dance with a floating globe, a graceful and even beautiful metaphor for Hitler’s deadly pas de deux with the actual world.

Chaplin’s supporting players give him plenty to react to, especially Paulette Goddard as the feisty orphan, Hannah. Goddard and Chaplin were a real life couple at the time, but they would divorce in 1942, and the legality of their marriage has never been quite clear. Luckily their union lasted long enough for Goddard to play this role, which she performs with great energy and pluck, especially when Hannah repeatedly whacks stormtroopers on the head with a frying pan. Most of the other supporting characters are male, although Grace Hayle plays Mrs. Napaloni as a kind of Margaret Dumont character from the Marx Brothers canon, always unsure about what is going on around her and usually being tripped up by one of the more chaotic men. Maurice Moscovitch is sympathetic and wise as the Jewish community’s leader, Mr. Jaeckel, while Henry Daniell delivers a memorable villain in the sneeringly heartless Garbitsch, who constantly pours his poisonous ideas into Hynkel’s receptive ear. Schultz, the one good officer in Hynkel’s army, comes off as a sadly flat character, but Reginald Gardiner doesn’t get much opportunity to flesh him out. Jack Oakie, on the other hand, enjoys lots of screen time as the cartoonish Napaloni, whose size and bombastic talk irk little Hynkel so effectively.

The Great Dictator earned five Oscar nominations, including nods for Chaplin and Oakie, but it won nothing, thanks to a year of strong contenders that included The Philadelphia Story (1940), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Rebecca (1940). See Chaplin and Goddard together in the earlier film, Modern Times (1936), and look for Goddard on her own in The Women (1939), So Proudly We Hail! (1943), and The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). For more of Chaplin’s sound films, try Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), or A King in New York (1957). Don’t miss career villain Henry Daniell in The Sea Hawk (1940), The Woman in Green (1945), and The Body Snatcher (1945). For another anti-Nazi comedy made during Hitler’s reign, see To Be or Not to Be (1942), which makes an excellent double bill with The Great Dictator.