Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1941

The Contenders:

Blossoms in the Dust
Citizen Kane
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
Hold Back the Dawn
How Green Was My Valley (winner)
The Little Foxes
The Maltese Falcon
One Foot in Heaven
Sergeant York
Suspicion

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1941

The Contenders:

Barbara Stanwyck: Ball of Fire
Greer Garson : Blossoms in the Dust
Olivia de Havilland: Hold Back the Dawn
Bette Davis: The Little Foxes
Joan Fontaine: Suspicion (winner)

Know Your Spouse

Film: Suspicion
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

When I did the 1001 Movies list, I watched a lot of Hitchcock, since he is by far the best-represented director on the big list. Not all of Hitch’s movies made the list, though, and the only one that contains an Oscar-winning performance was left off. That film is Suspicion, a film that is in many ways classic Hitchcock and in others seems tonally strange. It’s a hard film to figure. Part of the tonal strangeness comes from moments where the mood doesn’t merely shift but 180s on a dime. The other odd bit here is that we spend the entire movie knowing that Cary Grant is playing a rogue and a “bad boy” and convinced that he might well be a serial murderer.

Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) is a charming and dashing man, desired by all the ladies both despite and because of his bad boy nature. He’s an inveterate gambler, always broke, and always in debt. He meets Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) on a train and manages to charm her despite her being something close to a spinster. When he suddenly arrives in her town, she is smitten in spite of herself and even though her father (Cedric Hardwicke) disapproves, she soon runs off with him and elopes.