What a terrific movie this was...well worth the eight week wait!
Terrific acting by the lead stars and totally believable plotting.... masterpiece!
There is something to be written about cats in the movies. The Suspect, a near-masterpiece, offers a feline who makes for as tense a sofabound moment as the one ouside in one of those cobbled alleys which haunt The Third Man. Say no more here about either case except that Robert Siodmak's take on London early in the twentieth century is, for all its contrivances, as vivid as Reed's post-war Vienna..
Often thought to give gung-ho, lung-bursting performances, Charles Laughton here turns his portliness to that of an officebound man whose underlings are as subservient as his wife is domineeringly cantankerous. So sedulously does Siodmak build up the atmosphere, which owes much to his German origins, that one feels for Laughton, whose late-flowering passion drives him to dispose of those lying between him and happiness with Ella Raines.
He reckons without Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges) whose calmly awkward questions do not let up. This is not the stuff of gore but steely voices, whether real or sometimes in the mind. For all its depiction of foggy streets and gaslit interiors, the abiding impression left by The Suspect is of a world in which minds toubled by disappointed hopes are let loose .
It also leaves one eager to see out the James Ronald novel on which it is based. Perhaps inspired by the Crippen case, it could prove worth setting alongside the work of Patrick Hamilton.