The Unsuspected (1947)

Directed by Michael Curtiz; produced by Michael Curtiz and Charles Hoffman

The secretary (Barbara Wooddell) of a radio-series host (Claude Rains) is murdered, the crime being contrived to look like suicide. A dead heiress’s husband (Michael North) of three days turns up, asking some odd and intrusive questions. The heiress herself (Joan Caulfield) returns with possible amnesia. And this is just the start of the mystery…

The set-up of The Unsuspected is excellent; it is similar to something Agatha Christie may have written if she wanted to be fun, as well as intelligent. That the movie cannot sustain the quality and doesn’t succeed in the execution are not, in fact, reasons to miss it. While the story is poorly devised in its later stages, the movie is stylish: a clumsy man stumbling over rocky ground while dressed like Cary Grant and talking like Noel Coward.

The acting, led by veteran Rains, is above average. Rains himself is suave and enjoyable, as he usually is. Constance Bennett is very appealing as his radio series’ sharp and quick-witted producer. The other cast members handle themselves well.

The characters they are given are three-dimensional. The script, as opposed to the story, is more than satisfactory, creating people who are convincingly funny, villainous, cruel, decent, hopeful. There is a genuine atmosphere of mystery as to what North is up to, and whether Rains is moral or amoral (“I rather like playing God,” he says to a criminal he has something on).

The story, however, is better suited to a low-grade programmer starring actors no one knows. The very motive for the first murder is a bit of a mystery in itself; it is touched upon, but the elucidation is not persuasive. The police-work by the leading official detective (Richard Donovan) is erratic, clever one moment, obtuse the next. And the means by which the killer provides him- or herself with an alibi should have been exploded by any number of the people with whom he or she was with the night of the homicide. And how the police know to follow a would-be killer near the movie’s end to prevent another death is not explained.

But what carries The Unsuspected, aside from the above average performances, is, as implied above, its style. The cinematography, while not expert, combines with the direction, to give the film a pleasing setting. There are clever moments, such as an unsavoury ruffian (Jack Lambert) gazing out the window of his room at the ‘Peekskill Hotel’ to see the hotel’s neon sign light up the town’s last four letters. Rains’s isolated mansion is a fitting environment for the action (Bennett makes some remark about its rural and uncivilised location – just before we see a hundred party guests drive away in their large cars), with its big rooms, sound-proofed study and constant rain-storms.

Though the story fails, and the mystery is certainly not what the writers seemed to have thought it to be, The Unsuspected is similar to a holiday dinner at which beans and bread are served for the only course, but in lavish, well-decorated and caringly-prepared surroundings.