A terrific blend of mystery, drama, suspense and even some comedy make this film a winner!
This review is for the 2004 Warner Brothers DVD.
The movie opens on train where Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) sits down in a private first class compartment with a frumpy young woman named Lina (Joan Fontaine). Johnnie makes an excuse that he was in another first class car but couldn't stand the smoke. When the conductor collects the tickets, he finds that Johnnie doesn't have a first class ticket or enough money to cover the difference in fare. With some slick salesmanship, Johnnie gets Lina to pay the additional fare. This is a foreshadowing of things to come. They meet again and have a whirlwind romance and get married. Lida quickly finds out that Johnnie has champaign tastes on a beer drinker's budget and uses a lot of charm and shrewd chicanery to obtain money without doing an honest day's work. As time goes on, Lida losses trust in Johnnie but later develops legitimate fears that he may go as far as committing murder for financial gain. This sets up the...
"I Was Afraid You'd Stop Loving Me"
Joan Fontaine was wonderful in this sensitive film about a shy woman who unexpectedly finds love and allows her insecurities to fuel her imagination with suspicion. She easily won the Academy Award for her performance following her fine turn the prior year in Rebecca. Based on a novel by Francis Iles, Hitchcock's second film starring Fontaine is more about love and the fear of losing it than suspense, but still has enough of his little touches to make it enjoyable as both.
Joan Fontaine is the shy but wealthy Lina. Though her head is often buried in books, her heart still beats, and when she is shown a little attention by irresponsible charmer Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant), who calls her monkey-face, she begins to fall in love. When she overhears her family talking about her, it hurts her deeply, and she turns to Johnnie for the romance and adventure both she and those who know her thought she'd never have.
Fontaine is wonderful as she pines for the popular...
Not the best of Hitchcock, but the best that WHV owns
Hitchcock's three greatest films, IMHO, are "Rear Window", "Vertigo", and "Psycho". However, those are owned by Universal. The four films in this collection are very good films by general standards and pretty good films by Hitchcock standards.
"Suspicion" was made in the U.S., but has the look and feel of Hitchcock's British films. Joan Fontaine plays a woman who marries a charming man (Cary Grant) and doesn't realize until after their marriage that he is a perpetual adolescent - and pathological liar. But could he also be a killer? If you don't know the answer until the end, that is because Hitchcock didn't know either.
"Strangers on a Train" has a pro tennis player (Farley Granger) wanting to divorce his cheating wife so he can marry someone else. However, the cheating wife is expecting and thinks her current husband will be a great provider even if he isn't the father - divorce is out of the question. Our hero makes the mistake of discussing his problems with...
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