The Unsuspected

Hi Aki,

Today I watched The Unsuspected a terrific movie from 1947 directed at Warners by Michael Curtiz. He must have struck a great deal with Warners, because he actually got copyright on the movie – which seems almost unheard of back then. Curtiz was not that famous of a director, either, though he was really competent.

Story involves radio host and writer of creepy stories of murder Victor Grandison, played by Claude Rains (the biggest star name in the cast). We see him commit a murder in the opening sequence, although mostly we only see his shadow – his gloved hands – his hat and ominous silhouette – and one very-brief shot of his face reflected upside-down on the mirrored surface of a table. This shot is so brief that I suspect Curtiz meant for us to go on guessing; he’s playing with us, did we really see that nice Claude Rains as the killer? (To be honest, Rains had played killers and madmen as well as nice guys; he first hit the big time in Hollywood with The Invisible Man and he played the Phantom of the Opera in a movie just around this time. He had also played very nice psychologists and lovers in Now, Voyager a Bette Davis tearjerker and other great movie from Warners.)

Then we go on to see Rains deliver his radio show, an episode he calls, ‘The Unsuspected.’ It is a murder case where the killer is unknown, but Rains claims he knows – and it could be anybody! As Rains delivers these lines, we see a lineup of the cast of characters at a party – a clever device to introduce everybody. It turns out this party is a birthday party for Rains himself, at his home (which turns out not to be his home after all, but the estate of his ward, Mathilda – only she perished a few weeks earlier in the sinking of a ship.

To this party a stranger comes: an unknown, handsome, and rather hostile young man, who announces that he is Mathilda’s husband. They married just before she went on the ship, and he was himself called into service abroad in the weeks since, and has just returned. They all doubt him, of course – the man who should have married Mathilda only he broke her heart and married Rains’s niece instead; Rains’s niece herself, a tart-tongued little harpy played by Audrey Totter in a role that seems clearly written for Bette Davis; Rains; and Rains’s friend the chief of homicide division. But the young man assures them all he is as rich as Mathilda, and doesn’t want any claim on her fortune; he only wants her portrait to remember her by. This portrait dominates the drawing-room of the mansion in a tip of the hat (or a swipe of the pen) to Laura the earlier murder mystery and huge success by Otto Preminger.

The story is brimming with twists: next thing we know, Mathilda is not dead – then she meets her husband at the airport and doesn’t know him – but he produces witnesses to their wedding, including the Judge who married them. She still doesn’t remember, and Rains suspects the young man has some ulterior motive and is lying. The tart-tongued niece is all over the young man, because her husband (the one who jilted Mathilda, though he loved her and she loved him) is now a worthless drunk, drinking to forget the bad bargain he made when he broke Mathilda’s heart and took up with the niece. There is also the ‘unsuspected’ himself, the murderer mentioned by Rains in his broadcast – apparently Rains has tracked him down, confronted him with his guilt, solved the crime – and lets him go free, with the notion of using him later, in a scene that surely cements our trust that Rains is the killer, and not the nice guy he pretends to be.

Everything ends happily of course. Though along the way Rains must commit two more murders, and make every effort to murder the young man and Mathilda herself. These last two attempts fail, and as Rains is delivering his radio broadcast that evening, in walk Mathilda and the young man (soon they will be husband and wife for real) and a host of cops. Seeing it’s all over for him, Rains then confesses on air in ‘a broadcast without precedent in the history of radio … I told you about the Unsuspected. Now I will tell you that the Unsuspected is I … I am the Unsuspected … your genial host … Victor Grandison.’

A final bravura shot shows two cops escorting Rains down a yard into prison, ominous shadows everywhere.

These shadows are the key to what is great about this movie. Not only is the production design top-notch, they did a great job mixing stage scenes with scenes in real locations. Woody Bredell is the chief DP, and Robert Burks handles special effects cinematography. And they do an amazing job. The biggest letdown in the movie is the cast – again and again I found myself wondering how engaging the movie might have been had it had real stars in the roles. Rains is very good, the rest of the cast is adequate, Constance Bennet is her usual Eve Arden style wit machine, but the two lovers, the young man and Mathilda, are not up to the task.

But I was just loving every shot – how it was lit and designed. There are two very awkward cuts, evidence probably of post-release shortening. I imagine the film, which must have had a very big budget, did not make money, and was shortened for second releases and later television releases. It has not been restored, though the print as usual from Ted Turner’s collections, is beautifully done and digitized.

(written around 11 March 2009)