Unsuspected, The (1947)

[Steve-O]

Posted by Don Malcolm on 9/3/2006, 2:15 pm

(Michael Curtiz Productions, Warner Bros., 1947)
DIRECTOR: Michael Curtiz
NOIR PEDIGREE: Mildred Pierce (1945), The Breaking Point (1950)

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Woody Bredell
NOIR PEDIGREE: Phantom Lady (1944), The Killers (1946)

SCREENPLAY: Ranald MacDougall
NOIR PEDIGREE: Mildred Pierce (1945), Possessed (1947), The Breaking Point (1950), The Naked Jungle (1954), Queen Bee (1955)

LEAD ACTORS
Claude Rains (Victor Grandison)
NOIR PEDIGREE: Notorious (1946), Rope of Sand (1949), Where Danger Lives (1950)

Joan Caulfield (Matilda Frazier)
NOIR PEDIGREE: Larceny (1948)

Audrey Totter (Althea Keane)
NOIR PEDIGREE: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Lady in the Lake (1947), The High Wall (1947), Alias Nick Beal (1949), The Set-Up (1949), Tension (1950), Under The Gun (1951), The Sellout (1952), Man in the Dark (1953), Women’s Prison (1955), A Bullet For Joey (1955)

Constance Bennett (Jane Moynihan)
NOIR PEDIGREE: Paris Underground (1945)

Hurd Hatfield (Oliver Keane)
NOIR PEDIGREE: Destination Murder (1950)

Michael (Ted) North (Steven Howard)
NOIR PEDIGREE: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), The Devil Thumbs A Ride (1947)

SUPPORTING ACTORS
Fred Clark (Richard Donovan)
NOIR PEDIGREE: Ride The Pink Horse (1947), Cry Of The City (1948), Alias Nick Beal (1948), Flamingo Road (1949), White Heat (1949), Sunset Blvd. (1950), The Hollywood Story (1951), A Place in the Sun (1951)

Jack Lambert (Press)
NOIR PEDIGREE: O.S.S/u (1946), Specter of the Rose/u (1946), The Killers (1946), Force of Evil/u (1948), Border Incident (1949), The Enforcer (1951), 99 River Street (1953), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Chicago Confidential (1957), Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), Party Girl/u (1958)


For the best in stylish, upper-crust 40s murder mystery, there are really only two choices: Laura and The Unsuspected. The former has a reputation as a timeless classic; the latter is much, much darker and far more satisfying as a film noir, but remains underappreciated.

What has Laura got that The Unsuspected hasn’t? All the romantic, mid-range melodramatic elements that make for an essentially safe, polished, none-too-threatening entertainment experience—a dynamic, exceptionally attractive couple in Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews; a marvelously b*tchy homme fatale in Clifton Webb; a celebrated score and theme song from David Raksin.

You won’t find any of these things in The Unsuspected. What you have instead is the noir mastery of director Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Woody Bredell, who take aspects of the Laura plotline into new levels of intricacy and darkness, fueled by an almost lapidary sense of frame and scene construction. The camerawork and lighting in The Unsuspected, particularly in the studio scenes (inside the Croton mansion where most of the action takes place) is possibly the most sublimely sinister cinematography in the entire noir canon.

What The Unsuspected also has going for it is Claude Rains, giving one of his most nuanced performances as the mesmerizing master of indirection, “genial host” Victor Grandison, a man too fascinated by murder to resist the temptation to dabble in it himself. Of course, if it weren’t for the fact that Grandison has been carefully orchestrating the takeover of his niece’s fortune, murder might not have been necessary. Though it’s never stated as such in the film, the “boat accident” that apparently claimed the life of Matilda Frazier (aka “the little heiress, played by Joan Caulfield) was yet another “Grandison production.”

His aid in this effort has been his other niece, Althea, a grasping poor relation who has harbored a lifelong resentment of Matilda. Audrey Totter plays Althea as a woman of relentless appetite who will stop at nothing to get a larger slice of whatever pie is at hand. Her biggest sacrifice in the scheme to conquer and divide Matilda’s fortune is that she was forced to seduce and marry Matilda’s fiancé, Oliver Keane (played to boozy perfection by Hurd Hatfield). Oliver, who genuinely loved Matilda, has been on a permanent bender ever since being hoodwinked into marriage to Althea. The scheming Grandison will know how to utilize him in an even more brazen attempt to take total control of the Frazier fortune.

But there are counter-forces at work. Grandison’s secretary, Roslyn Wright, senses that something is amiss, and has been snooping around. She is the first victim, winding up swinging from a chandelier at the Croton mansion, an apparent suicide. Grandison’s wise-cracking assistant, Jane Moynihan (played vibrantly by Constance Bennett) is beginning to have grave doubts about her boss.

The plot gets thicker when Steven Howard (Michael “Ted” North) appears at Grandison’s surprise birthday party with a much bigger shocker—he claims to have been married to Matilda before the boat accident. In reality, Howard is looking to avenge the death of Roslyn, who’s he convinced was murdered. Behind his socializing with Grandison and Althea (who takes an unhealthy interest in the handsome Howard), Steven looks for clues to convince police chief Donovan (Fred Clark) that Roslyn did not commit suicide.

The final twist is lifted straight from Laura. It turns out that Matilda didn’t die in the boat accident after all. She returns home just in time to enter into an ever-accelerating maelstrom of innuendo and treachery. With the forces swirling around him threatening to go out of control, Grandison concocts an elegantly complex scheme to rid himself of Althea, Oliver, Matilda and Howard. Once all the elements of the scheme have been set into motion, he returns to his Manhattan studio to deliver another of his macabre tales of murder, confident that he has escaped detection. Events that unfold in the studio, however, soon prove that this is not the case.

What lifts The Unsuspected out of its derivativeness? Curtiz and Bredell, first and foremost, who twist opulence into a half-world of endless shadows and shifting shapes, with an amazing series of trick reflections and intricately diffused lighting. Next, Rains—who is a brilliant chameleon, taking the template of the Lydecker character to a new level of calculating malevolence. Plus Totter and Bennett—who add sparkle and style to roles that could easily have been stereotypes.

The one problem for the film is that its romantic couple (Caulfield and North) is low-wattage compared to the rest of the proceedings, and pretty much flunk any possible comparison between Tierney and Andrews. North, in what proved to be his final film appearance, tries valiantly but doesn’t really have the presence/mystique for his character. The doe-eyed Caulfield, stuck with a thankless role, has nowhere to go except to be a rag doll tossed between the thrust-and-parry between Rains and North—though she has one solid scene in which she actually gets the better of Totter.

Curtiz and Bredell seem to sense this, however, and keep the Caulfield-North scenes as brief and tight as possible, all the while surrounding them with increasingly shadowy menace.

The Unsuspected is notable also for Grandison’s use of technology—one of the earliest incidences in noir. Grandison is especially adept at sound recording, and he uses it to great advantage in his schemes—including his blackmailing of stalwart villain Jack Lambert, who gives another memorable turn as a not-quite-competent-enough henchman. The Unsuspected may have started a vogue for techno-gimmickry in crime films, something that quickly spun out of control in post-WWII Hollywood and continues unabated to this day.

In the 1947 NOTY voting, The Unsuspected ranked 15th. I’d have to say that even in that deep class of notable noirs, this ranking is too low. In particular, Woody Bredell’s lenswork is on a par with that of the great John Alton—but because of the relative obscurity of this film, Bredell wasn’t even nominated for Best Cinematographer in ’47. That is a most regrettable oversight, and one that this review, from your “genial host,” wishes to set right.

What we have here is the apex of noir style wedded to the glossy studio system approach. From a formalist perspective, The Unsuspected is unquestionably in the top ten of “best photographed noirs.” That doesn’t make it a great picture—it’s merely very, very good—but it makes it one that will give lasting pleasure to those who respond to noir’s unique visual allure.





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[cigar joe]

Director: Michael Curtiz, stars: Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, Constance Bennett, Hurd Hatfield, Ted North, Jack Lambert, and Audrey Totter. WOW, this turns out to be a very entertaining, who-dun-it, where you kinda know/guess who-dun-it but don't really care because its a great ride with very witty dialog getting to the end with quite a number of unexpected twists along the way. Another plus for me is its New York references and location shots, Grand Central Station, the 3rd Avenue el, a three tailed PAA Lockheed "Connie" Constellation, Peekskill, Croton, the Queensboro Bridge, The Hell Gate Bridge, Wards Island, The Sawmill River Parkway, and the old main terminal at Laguardia Airport to name a few.



The story starts out with a murder in a Croton Mansion belonging to millionairess Matilda Frazier (Caufield) who at the onset we learn has been lost with all hands in a fire at sea. Living at the mansion is Matilda's uncle and ward to her estate, popular writer, and radio mystery/true crime show host Victor Grandison (Rains), along with his other niece Althea Kean (Totter) and her drunkard husband Oliver (Hatfield) who don't have a penny between them.



Victor Grandison (Rains) below and Althea Kean (Totter) center, Oliver Kean (Hatfield) right.


The murder victim is Victor's secretary who is strangled while she is on the phone to Althea, the murderer arranges the study to make it appear that the secretary has committed suicide by hanging herself. Various clues and facts are quickly displayed and piled up at the front end of this that you are so flooded with information that it is chore of a mystery just trying to figure out what is relevant and what is not.

Jane Moynihan (Bennett)


We cut to Manhattan and Victor's radio program where we meet producer Jane Moynihan (Bennett), and as Victor is doing his spiel on the murder that was faked as a suicide in his mansion, we zoom in on a speaker and in turn cross-fade to a steam locomotive emerging from a tunnel then to a portable radio in a New York Central passenger car heading north where Oliver is listening apprehensively to the details of the case and then we rotate out the window and see Oliver superimposed by reflection on the town of Peekskill rolling by. Next we leave the train and zoom up Peekskill's main drag to the exterior of Hotel Peekskill and in turn find ourselves inside a darkened hotel room that has a shrouded figure (Lambert) on a bed listening to a radio also with Victor's program. The room is lit only by the flashing light of the hotel sign and the letters viewed from the window spell "KILL", "KILL", "KILL" and iconic Noir sequence if there ever was one.

The Hotel Peekskill sequence:


Lambert & KILL sign


At a surprise birthday party for Victor a stranger Steven Francis Howard (North) arrives claiming to be Matilda's husband. He claims that right after Oliver jilted Matilda three days before their wedding marrying Althea, Matilda married him on the rebound. He has a marriage certificate to prove it and he is also heir to an oil fortune, so that eliminates a shady motive for the claim.

Althea (Totter) & Howard (North)


Howard and his millions are more attractive to Althea than her alcoholic hubby and she "vibrates" towards Howard causing Oliver to imbibe even more. Now on top of all this we discover by telegram that Matilda was rescued by a radio-less fishing boat that finally made port in Brazil and she is winging it home to Laguardia Airport. This one is a must see for how well everything meshes.

Matilda (Caulfield) and Victor (Rains)


Oliver (Hatfield)


Wards Island NY location with Hell Gate & Triboro Bridges:


The film also has a pretty good chase sequence at the end but of course its movie geography that anybody familiar with NYC and environs will get a laugh out of. 10/10

From a great Noir reviewer on IMDb bmarcy

Stylish, satisfying ‘40s mystery every bit the equal of Laura – but overlooked
29 December 2003 | by bmacv (Western New York)
Michael Curtiz plays a sly game in The Unsuspected – a marvelous mystery that manages to preserve the venerable trappings of the English weekend-at-the-country-house murder (with some of the gimmickry that implies) while setting it amid a nest of Manhattan smart-mouths. He shows us who the murderer is in the first few minutes of the movie (and echoes his revelation several times) but does it so glancingly that it fails to register. And even if it did, The Unsuspected proves such a banquet of writing, acting and visual detail – such as the neon sign on a hotel in Peekskill flashing only its four last letters to a room inside – that it wouldn't be spoiled at all.

Looming shadows stalk through the baronial upstate manse of Victor Grandison (the ineffable Claude Rains), host of a wildly popular true-crime radio show. Next thing, his loyal secretary is hanging from a chandelier (an apparent suicide, but we know better). This ghastly occurrence doesn't faze the house's other occupants – his gold-digging niece (Audrey Totter) and her boozehound husband (Hurd Hatfield), possibly because Totter was on the phone with the victim as she uttered her last scream but never bothered to report it. Or it could be that everybody's still in shock over the loss of another niece (Joan Caulfield), who has perished in a ship's fire while crossing the Atlantic.

Into their lives strides a Mysterious Stranger (Ted North), claiming to be Caulfield's widower. He's received variously: Rains treats him with cordial suspicion, Hatfield with glum distaste (he had a thing for Caulfield, too) while Totter throws herself at him, `vibrating.' And then who should turn up, safe and reasonably sound, but Caulfield herself. The plot is admittedly a little complicated (made more so by the resemblance between North and Hatfield, with their bland, unhappy faces, and between Totter and Constance Bennett, who could pass as her older sister (playing the Eve Arden role of the wise-cracking spinster helpmate). But it's nothing that a few more homicides can't clear up....

With Casablanca and Mildred Pierce behind him, Curtiz was at the height of his powers for The Unsuspected, and Warners plainly gave him full rein for this lavish production. He's matched every step of the way by the wondrous Woody Bredell, who supplies richly detailed, always evocative cinematography (it's a smashing-looking movie). Nor does the script falter: Every line gleams with witty malice. Though Caulfield unfathomably gets top billing, she pales next to Rains and Totter in top form, with Bennett a close runner-up. The movie boasts just about everything.

Why, then, isn't it better known? Usually labeled film noir, it's really more of a high-style ‘40s sophisticated mystery, as was Otto Preminger's Laura (and, like Laura, it hinges on a beautiful young woman, presumed dead, who unexpectedly re-emerges). But while Laura receives reverent homage as an evergreen classic (`They don't make ‘em like that anymore'), The Unsuspected remains relatively unknown except to fans of the noir cycle. Yet it's every bit at good a movie – certainly no less plausible – and honed to an even finer level of elegance. Go figure.

[MartinTeller]

[review from June 26, 2011]

Several familiar elements (from Laura, among others) add up to a not especially surprising or original thriller, but one thick with noir atmosphere. Curtiz knows how to put together a movie, and makes no major missteps here. A slate of good performances, with the standouts being Claude Rains and Audrey Totter. The plot is a little confusing at times, and doesn't entirely sort itself out by the end (the motive for the opening murder is only described in vague terms) but it's satisfying enough. The highlight of the film is the dynamite lighting by cinematographer Woody Bredell, classic deep blacks and piercing whites, with long, looming shadows. Rating: 7

[Steve-O]

This is such a great looking movie it's easy to overlook that the story makes no sense. I love it...