The Suspect

Director Robert Siodmak crashed onto the noir scene by directing three crime features released in 1944:  Phantom Lady (January), Christmas Holiday (June) and this film, The Suspect (December). Charles Laughton plays Philip Marshall, a soft-spoken accountant stuck in a marriage to hateful harridan Cora (a perfectly despicable Rosalind Ivan), who not only refuses to give him a divorce but threatens to ruin his reputation and career when she discovers that he’s been spending time with the young, beautiful, and kind Mary Gray (Ella Raines). Unsurprisingly, Cora ends up murdered, and Philip ends up the titular suspect. The screenplay by Bertram Millhauser and Arthur T. Horman cleverly makes viewers sympathize with a likely murderer not only because Cora was insufferably cruel, but because Philip comes across as a genuinely kind man, particularly in his playful exchanges with shop boy Merridew (Raymond Severn). Siodmak plays with the Edwardian period setting (1902) with a few wet, gas-lit streetscapes and exteriors and lines like “I know how to use one of the new typewriting machines.” The acting by Laughton is characteristically brilliant.