Films in Five

"Films" because now this tumblr exudes artificial class, doesn't it? "Five" because who wants to read more than five sentences anyway?

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So Sorry!

School is hard! Stay tuned!

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The General

Because there just isn't enough literature by actual film authorities about the appeal of Buster Keaton already, we're here to join the chorus and just kind of reiterate what everyone else has already said (we didn't profess to be original here at FinF): Buster's onscreen character seems so relatable because he's you, and for us this seems especially true in 2013, with our obsessive 21st-century overwhelming self-awareness. Buster's not endearing because he's the underdog that can barely even walk without tripping over his absurd clown shoes, and sure, his expressionlessness is funny just because it's funny, but we think (and again, we're no experts, FinF is a place of untutored, undisciplined diatribes/gush sessions) that in addition to the deadpan, Buster is cool because whatever ridiculous situations he's thrown into (often through no fault of his own), he remains utterly self-possessed and aware. There's a sense that, even while he's a wannabe Confederate soldier manning a steam engine on the run from pesky Yankees, he himself is eternally dumbfounded by the absurdity of the situation; at the same time, he takes everything as it comes to him, no matter how outlandish; Buster knows that shit is sideways, and he still takes it in stride and rigs a fucking makeshift cannon to the back of his little train. Trying to save his unrequited Southern belle love from the clutches of the Union is all in a day's work for Buster's character and he knows it's weird but he doesn't even fuckin care, and as a result he gets shit done, mostly through luck but always without a smile; Chaplin (who we love just as much as Buster but in different ways) garners your sympathy while Buster gets your admiration for knowingly making his way through a world of high-larious insanity (not better, just different). Plus the train special effects in The General are on POINT.

So: We like to think that behind the Great Stone Face Buster is smirking, all-seeing, all-knowing, completely in control, and a motherfucking badass.

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Easy Rider

Dennis Hopper's acid-laced warning to the denizens of the counterculture movement of the '60s who thought that traveling through the American south on motorcycles while wearing headbands and fringe would be a pleasant holiday-esque experience; we can state unequivocally that no holiday should ever include the shocking, fairly grisly fate of a Baby Jack Nicholson's head (spoilers?). Dennis and Peter Fonda, drug money stashed cleverly in the patriotically inspired gas tank of Peter's chopper (did our motorcycle research), jaunt across the American west and south to partake in the Mardi Gras celebrations of New Orleans, but not before they stop at a ranch, a hippie commune, a tiny Louisiana town, and a brothel, naturally. Dennis and Pete are the chillest caricatures of the '60s you ever did see but it's not like the movie feels dated; in fact it's really a relevant piece for any generation on the on the cusp of cultural upheaval (which is every generation?). The hippie commune is hilarious and fascinating, the depiction of the tiny Louisiana town is scathing to say the least, and the entire sequence of the brothel/Mardi Gras festivities/graveyard acid trip is mesmerizing and kind of an amazing piece of filmmaking. If after watching Easy Rider you don't want to traverse our fair country on a low-slung chopper, wind in your hair and murderous hillbillies in a dingy pickup on your tail, then we can't do anything for you.

So: We can't tell if this made us want to do acid or never do acid. Go watch it and tell us what YOU think, today!

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This movie is a feature-length elaboration on the sentiment portrayed charmingly by Governor John Ratcliffe through glorious SONG in the oh-so-catchy number "Mine, Mine, Mine" from Disney's gorgeously animated,  totally true-to-life and not racist at all film from 1995, Pocahontas; BOGIE'S GOT THA GOLD FEVAHHH and it's like only a little disturbing. Mexico's the place to be if you feel like the rat race is just not for you; Bogie's begging pesos off of other American tourists until he stumbles on Fellow Unwashed American Tim Holt, and the happy couple in turn meets Walter Huston (director John Huston's dad omg cayuuuute), an old-timer from the original Gold Rush days who swears that the Sierra Madre mountains over there are fucking chock-full of real-live GOLD and Bogie and Tim are super up for that so the trio treks away from civilization (always a good sign) into the misty mountains cold swelteringly hot. Well there's gold there all right, and if Bogie hadn't gone completely batshit the Three Amigos here probably could've walked away very rich very happy men but NO this is where the GOLD FEVAHH takes possession of Bogie and shit man he basically goes crazy with greed and gets paranoid and super distrustful of Chill Tim and Easygoing Walter and as if that weren't enough there's bandits and Federales and "indios" or Mexican natives and snakes and it's just generally a party up derr. Movies where men are stripped of their trappings of civilization and all the social constructs therein and are reduced to basic instinct n all that animal intensity are some of our faves and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is like watching Bogie devolve into some sort of personification of vice or some shit; there's a good chunk in the middle where it's mostly just him talking to himself and he's damn good at bein' crazy guys. It's very beautiful and disturbing and Walter Huston is just a gem; Bogie looks great but we think we remember reading somewhere that that gorge crop of hair (inexplicably on top of a fairly middle-aged Bogie's head) is not all Bogie's own if you know what we're saying. 

So: BADGES WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING BADGES now you know

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The Grapes of Wrath

As woeful, illiterate but pure of heart denizens of the Dust Bowl valiantly creep across the barren American Heartland to California the Land of Promise and Raisins, mumbling about handbills and picking peaches we can't help but scream inwardly because Jesus Christ are we not able to get emotionally invested in Okies tho. Henry Fonda's stubble is particularly attractive and he seems a little too pretty to be a downtrodden former jailbird but we can't deny that he pulls off the whole secret-champion-of-the-poor thing. The whole thing is like a picaresque train of depressing occurrences but like bathed in sand; of course people die (there's just too many elderly characters to begin with for that not to happen on a cross-country trek of doom, obviously) and it gets political with worker strikes and the RED MENACE OF COMMUNISM and the Joads stay comfortably oblivious throughout. Gregg Toland's cinematography is mind-blowingly beautiful, the Dust Bowl has never been more seemingly photogenic (Depression-era Oklahoma really sparkles in those blacks and whites guys) and everyone's ratty hand-me-downs look sharp; the documentary-like style is v. intentional and awesome. Are you ready to have some homespun Okie philosophy dropped on ya?

So: THIS IS NOT A MOVIE YOU WATCH FOR FUN. It might be a movie you watch for Henry Fonda's face. Or like working conditions in America's West during the '30s. Either one.

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Unforgiven

We love a good once-virile-manly-man-attempts-to-get-his-groove-back elegiac genre-bender, and who better to serve up intimidating aging-male maleness-reaffirmation than Clint Eastwood? Young children notwithstanding, he decides he'd really rather ride off to avenge some prostitute he's never me (faithful widower and all that) in a nearby town that languishes in the tyrannical grip of sheriff Gene Hackman; he picks up Morgan Freeman on the way, rolls his eyes at cocky Jaimz Woolvett (spelling? No?) and off the trio go. Gene kicks the shit out of Richard Harris and steals his biographer (Saul Rubinek LOVE); Clint struggles with overcoming his past as basically a mass murderer and also struggles with like pneumonia or some other shit that probably could've been avoided but we need something to make Clint look even more pathetic obvi. Interestingly the bodies don't pile up without a heaping helping of accompanying remorse, the whole thing is very sober, almost reluctant; Clint himself is certainly reluctant almost the entire way through. It's all about the dark, seamy underbelly of the Western hero figure and it's really great; interesting framing device there, Clint.

So: Disenchanted Westerns are our fave Westerns (Omg The Wild Bunch)

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Wings

You can't possibly fathom the sheer rage kindled within us when we realized Baby Gary Cooper did, in fact, die after literally three minutes of screen time and we're not gonna lie, it took us a good hour to refocus our attentions away from absent Gary fury back to the matter at hand which in fact is World War I. Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen (bbyzz) are from two different classes but love the same girl (YOU DON'T SAY), who's actually pledged herself to Dick but lets Buddy go off to war thinking he's got a chance at her heart while being a complete dick and ignoring plucky Clara Bow who actually adores him. Buddy and Dick become fighter pilot lovers best pals until a rift between them concerning aforementioned dream girl Jobyna Ralston ends like very accidentally depressingly badly, although from this we do get the first onscreen male on male kiss (pioneering!!!!). Clara puts on an adorable army outfit and drives an ambulance to be nearer to an oblivious Buddy who really is giving us a young Robert Downey Jr. vibe in the facial arena, no? Flight scenes with the planes are astonishingly magnificent for the period; this shit is looong and full of war scenes that take their time but it's the first Best Picture winner so you're gonna like it goddamnit.

So: Actually kind of super adorable 

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Intolerance

The irony of D. W. Griffith's calling this film Intolerance after creating basically an ode to intolerance's poster boys in Birth of a Nation is not lost upon us here at FinF, although in this case the former backtracks and bashes intolerance in FOUR DIFFERENT PLOTLINES taking place in FOUR DIFFERENT ERAS tinted in FOUR DIFFERENT COLORS and it lasts for almost FOUR FUCKING HOURS yes. There's Babylon vs. Persia, there's everybody-hates-Jesus, there's everybody-hates-the-Huegenots (like okay) and there's a modern day fuck-this-terrible-judicial-system-it-hates-poor-people line which was probably our favorite, and they're all intertwined with Lillian Gish rocking a cradle to the tune of Walt Whitman in between each segment. This is a fucking huge film and if anything you need to see it for its sheer vastness (sets, extras, themes, ALL THE VASTNESS). Don't let this be your first silent film probably. Go watch some Charlie Chaplin or something tbh.

So: We're glad we saw it; we're not clamoring to sit through it again anytime soon. Honesty is da best policy kbyeee

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Melinda and Melinda

Different side of Woody because normally we think of his stuff as so organic and natural-sounding, y'know? We don't pretend to know anything but we think that Melinda and Melinda feels so artificial or like so mannered is because the point is that the majority of the film is just Wallace Shawn and Larry Pine's stories being acted out as they make them up' the artifice of the comedy or tragedy or life is supposed to be apparent, we think. Radha Mitchell does double duty as Happy Awkward Melinda and Sad Fucked-Up Melinda like very well; Will Ferrell just randomly shoes up and is kind of oblivious-nerdy-adorable, actually. Benefits include one happy ending, one sad ending, something for everybody; Woody's own lovable brand of existential desperation bleeds in throughout of course. Chiwetel Ejiofor turns out to be a dick and we're sad about it.

So: Not your average Woody Allen! Steve Carrell should've been in it more let's be real

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Ben-Hur

Charlton Heston's blindingly white horse teeth protrude through the saturated hues of BC-era Rome. Their sparkling vastness can't protect him or his family of Cathy O'Donnell and Martha Scott in their Jewishness from the complete assholery of his childhood-frind-turned-bigshot-Roman-tribune Stephen Boyd who decides that jail and a slave galley are in order for the ladies of the Hur family and Prince Judah (Charlton), respectively. Charlton's teeth gleam menacingly as he becomes bent on revenge, the quest for which culminates in that chariot race that we definitely thought was gonna be overrated but was in fact one of the more exciting scenes we've seen on film. We love Hugh Griffith but just can't sign off on the brown face; we can sign off on those damn fine horses of his, but as with the brownface, leprosy's little cameo at the end is a thumbs down. Every shot basically is fucking gorgeous and you really can't get more epic than this; in the end, it's all about Jesus (played by an out of work opera singer so it goes).

So: Oh we ALWAYS in the mood for an epic epic and this one just really gives and gives

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As is

customary when we're being lazy shits and can't muster up five sentences about Ben-Hur (which was gr8 btw), here's everyone's favorite Films in Five Feature aka Coming Up Next!

Werqing through AFI's Top 100 (we're soy close) is rly fun but we've also got a few randos sprinkled up in there so:

Ben-Hur - 1959, William Wyler

The Grapes of Wrath - 1940, John Ford

Melinda and Melinda - 2004, Woody Allen

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - 1948, John Huston

Easy Rider - 1969, Dennis Hopper

Intolerance - 1916, D. W. Griffith

The General - 1926, Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton

A Star is Born - 1954, George Cukor

OooOOooOOohh what an eclectic and literate smattering of a broad range of films from different genres and periods and directors in order to appeal to a varied readership amirite?

Gary Cooper says you're welcome.

Questions and comments and suggestions alwaiez welcome hit us up catch u on da flipside xoxo FinF

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Cool Hand Luke

Okay we know we just watched Sophie's Choice and we're like oh there can't possibly be a scene more uncomfortable than the "choice" scene at the end but guys we're not even kidding you that fucking egg-eating scene in this movie we just cannot with this; Cool Hand Luke is the portrait of a man whose chief goal in life is never to conform, even when he gets sent to prison camp for cutting the heads off of parking meters (see "nonconformity"). Paul Newman and His Blue Eyes (lord have mercy) have a bit of a rocky start tryna make friends with the other chain gang guys because they are a hard bunch with cute pet names for each other but Paul doesn't even fuckin' care he is just too cool for school and it's not long before all the other guys start to worship him as the Most Popular Guy at Camp because he's great at poker (a "cool hand") and takes no shit from the authorities and can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in an hour (we almost vomited). Unlike most of the movies that we see we can pinpoint the exact moment when we decided we really really liked this movie: Paul accompanies himself on the banjo, softly singing "Plastic Jesus" as a tribute to his recently deceased mother (Jo Van Fleet, in a short but great supporting role); as the Captain and guards sense Paul's increasingly insubordinate attitude they begin to punish him more and more arbitrarily until he escapes not once but twice and ugh then you get a real depressing picture of what kind of sadistic shenanigans went on in those old time prison camps, it's very unsettling to watch men try to break another man's spirit. Cool Hand Luke is full of Jesus/Bible imagery and also a great supporting cast, mainly George Kennedy as Dragline, the giant gravelly-voiced leader of the chain gang; those shots of open road and wheat fields bathed in the golden light of late summer sun are freaking gorgeous and you wouldn't think this would be such a pretty movie but it totally is; the score is super perfect. It's just such classic Americana starring a classic American blue-eyed boy and though it's like fairly depressing at the end and the commentary about nonconformity is depressing in general Cool Hand Luke just made us feel good for some reason; except for the egg part.

So: Great camerawork too. It's just great. Paul Newman probably should've been shirtless for 100% of his screen time, not just like 80%.

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Sophie's Choice

Do you ever find yourself tossing and turning in your bed at night, grappling with the mysteries of the universe, the foremost of which is the phenomenon of America's (and probably the world's, let's be real) seemingly unconditional love affair with Meryl Streep? Here at Films in Five we've always been aware of the underlying current of Streep love that seems to have been implanted within us since our first viewing of The Devil Wears Prada but honestly we never knew why everyone lauded her so much because until we saw Kramer vs. Kramer we'd never seen Meryl in anything particularly serious or Oscar-bait-y (not that she wasn't fantastic in Julie and Julia because she was suck on it haters xoxo Julia Child); and then last week we watched Sophie's Choice because we love pain/who doesn't love a good Holocaust movie? we're actually tryna finish up AFI's Top 100 and oh my god guys did you know that this movie is the way that it is??? Peter MacNicol plays starry-eyed aspiring-novelist-from-the-South Stingo (yep) who's just moved into a very pink boardinghouse in Brooklyn to get his Great American Novel started; having loud sex above his room are Kevin Kline and Meryl, who Kevin (we learn in flashback, like most of the information in this movie) found collapsed on the cold checkerboard floor of a library apparently laid low by the embarrassment of asking for "Emile Dickens' poems" when really she just has anemia from being in concentration camps for being a Catholic Polish person. Kevin and Meryl have an extremely dysfunctional but very passionate (ain't that always the way) relationship and suddenly Stingo is (platonically, initially) part of this fucked-up threesome and they dress up in Gone-With-the-Wind era Southern finery and have tea parties and clamber all over the Brooklyn Bridge and listen to opera and generally have a great time until Meryl, under stress from an absent Kevin (he's got his own major issues let us tell you tho), confides in Stingo about her years in Poland and ugh god this is the Sophie's Choice that people recommend to you through gritted teeth ("Oh it's a classic AND ALSO THE SADDEST THING"). Just remember that Meryl, who learned to speak Polish and German for this role (!!), is playing a Polish concentration camp refugee who speaks broken, Polish-accented English when she's not speaking two other foreign languages; not once did we think to ourselves "Oh here's Meryl again!" while watching this, and we think that that is probably what people mean when they say Meryl is the bomb dot com @ acting; Kevin Kline in his first major role is very very good, and Peter MacNicol is a great blank slate young-naive-idealistic first person narrator.

So: It's really just amazing. Meryl's accent might get a bit grating but she's fucking MAKING SOPHIE'S CHOICE DAMNIT we're not ones to get too emotionally invested in sad films (we need to compartmentalize, darlings, or we'd implode probably) but not gonna lie the scene of the "choice" is a doozy.

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The Best Years of Our Lives

Wow wow well we were fully prepared to watch William Wyler's post-war piece with a slight air of detachment and with polite but mild disinterest because we're not gonna lie, the subject matter is not particularly relevant to us and we thought maybe it was going to be dealt with in a too-melodramatic way (it really could've veered into being treacly at several parts) but holy shit guys The Best Years of Our Lives really got to us. It's the story of three WWII servicemen, each from a different walk of life, finally returning home to face what will be painful reintegration into society: Fredric March has to get back into living with his understanding wife Myrna Loy (who we will talk about in a sec because we absolutely fucking love this bitch) and college-age son and grown daughter Teresa Wright (perf); non-actor and real-life disabled veteran Howard Russell has to go back to his white picket fence suburban home and his high school girlfriend (Cathy O'Donnell, in her first major film role) after having lost both of his hands in the service (which actually happened to Howard it's really a lot tbh); dashing Dana Andrews returns to oblivious and bitchy bombshell wife Virginia Mayo who we literally wanted to smack every time she was on screen. All three grapple with post-traumatic stress and look we're not going to presume to ever be able to understand the soldier's experience post-combat but The Best Years of Our Lives shows three men whose worlds had been pared down to the basic codes of loyalty, courage and honor under the pressures of the war and who now have to learn to live again in a narrow world of judgment and misunderstanding and even like dog-eat-dog capitalism and Jesus it's moving to watch these men cope; in working at approving GI loans at the bank Fred has to switch mindsets from thinking about all soldiers as equals in the face of death to ranking men in terms of how much of a loan risk they'd be to the bank and it makes him super depressed; Howard lives in fear that his high school sweetheart is only still willing to marry him out of pity; Dana was a super-decorated captain who now has to work as a lowly soda jerk for less money than he was making before the war and we can only assume the pain of having to make ice cream sundaes for rude customers after getting medals for rescuing fellow soldiers from bomb sites is ungodly. Fred and Dana do a phenomenal job; Howard is clearly not an actor but just the fact that his character's experience is like basically Howard's real life experience adds such a pathos to the performance and the thread of his relationship with Cathy O'Donnell is so goddamn sweet ugh we can't; even the secondary plot point of the romance of Dana and Teresa Wright it just so well done and like probably really shocking in 1946 (Teresa blatantly asserts that she wants to break up Dana's marriage); the thing we love about Myrna Loy (and it's really obvious in her comedies but no less in this dramatic role) is that there's this weird sort of awareness that she has, like she knows she's in a movie but that doesn't disturb the reality of the performance for the audience but she's always got that wry smile going on and ugh we don't know something about it really appeals to us and we just think she's the fucking greatest, she brings a warmth and a humor to this role of what could've just been a boring dutiful devoted wife gurl Myrna you are the bomb. Gregg Toland's use of deep focus makes for utterly beautiful shots and this movie is just so visually interesting with the framing and the mise-en-scene and ugh; idk something about this just felt so real (not that we'd know) and it really impressed us.

So: We liked Dana so much more in this than in Laura haters to the left, he's too charming to be a sullen noir-ish private eye. But god this movie unghhh 

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Modern Times

We're not mad but we do have to like reframe our minds when we watch a Charlie Chaplin comedy because we're not super into slapstick but when it comes to Chaplin bitch you better forget that you don't like slapstick for 87 minutes because this is the real deal. Chuck works on an assembly line and is like pretty terrible at it (naturally) and after a mishap with an automated food-serving machine (lulz, also the fact that they made that intricate machine that semi-works is so so great) totally loses it, runs amok in the plant, and gets hospitalized; on his release from the mental hospital he gets mistaken for a Communist strike instigator (as you do) and jailed, where he reads about how work is hella scarce and decides that he'd rather stay in jail; during this episode is such a blatant cocaine joke that we like couldn't believe it for a second (this is 1936, after all) seriously also it's hilarious. Chuck stops a jailbreak (inadvertently) and on his release meets Paulette Goddard whose character is "A Gamine" and who as a recently orphaned homeless girl tries to steal a loaf of bread and gets picked up by the police; Chuck helps her escape from the paddy wagon and they like immediately get very husband-wifey it's kind of adorable; Chuck tries to find various jobs and fails miserably hilariously at every single one until after a third stint in jail (idk) Paulette gets him a job at a cafe where she's a dancer and he has to wait tables and also sing and this episode culminates in Chuck literally singing gibberish (you can hear his voice! And then you can hear the silent film era's death rattles!) and he and Paulette walking into the sunset (also literally) which is very sweet and moving. The strategic use of sound in a mostly silent film is cool because besides the gibberish song scene the sound is used to indicate the "modern" aspects of the Modern Times world, like the plant boss' intercom and the food-machine seller's record player; the movie's like a pretty scathing indictment of the "modern" world that was approaching ever faster at the time it was made and Chuck is clearly not on board with the direction life was taking. Having seen her in The Women (phenomenal) it's weird to see Paulette in a silent part because not that we know much about silent movies but there's clearly such a huge difference between silent acting and then acting in sound films, we'd never seen an actor in both types of films before this and we just thought it was interesting idk Chuck and Paulette are adorbs together.

So: We just think that the disconnect between how in the plots of his films Chuck's character is the MOST hopelessly inept at any/all physical movement but in real life we think Charlie Chaplin is like the most in control of his body out of anyone ever it's fascinating.

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Doctor Zhivago

Oh we are ALWAYS in the mood for a period epic, the longer the better, the more melodramatic the better, and the more liberties taken with historical accuracy the muhfucking better, and Doctor Zhivago just really brought it in these categories; seriously this movie just looks so goddamn expensive it's really a thing of lavish '60s beauty, cinematography-wise. This movie is over three hours long and it follows the lives of two Russians through World War I and the Russian Revolution and the civil war afterwards (Reds, Whites, we didn't say we were good at history sry); when baby Yuri's mom dies and he's left orphaned he's taken in by his mom's friends and grows up with their daughter (eventually Geraldine Chaplin) and becomes Omar Sharif of the preternaturally soulful brown eyes (unff); by profession he's a doctor but he's really a POET at HEART until he has to cool it when the Bolsheviks find his work "subversive;" Julie Christie, on the other hand, has grown up with her mother who owns a teeny dress shop and is friends with Rod Steiger who basically sexually assaults teenage Julie and makes her his mistress (ugh god that red dress scene = cringing). After Julie eventually tries to shoot Rod at a Christmas party that Omar happens to be at, she marries firebrand student-turned-revolutionary Tom Courtenay (the idealistic young men always have glasses, don't they?) and Omar marries Geraldine (cute bby) but then the Revolution and horrific winter battles and Bolshevik rule and Lenin and "comrades" and redistribution of property and everything is like just total shit; Julie and Omar meet up on da road because he's fixin' soldiers and she's bein' a traveling nurse volunteer looking for her husband (who is now this like wanted man leader of the Bolshevik army idk it's very random) and they fall in loooooove and then they get separated and then get back together when Omar and fam move to the country to get away from their house which is overrun by "comrades" and who's living in the nearest village but Julie! Blah blah Alec Guinness shows up as a Bolshevik army guy and Omar's half-brother and the plot is extremely many-threaded and not worth describing here; the acting is like meh because they don't really have a great script to work with so the main thing about Doctor Zhivago is the extravagant, lush visuals: literally every shot is gorgeous and David Lean knows how to make a statement with a shot guys, if you haven't seen Lawrence of Arabia or The Bridge On the River Kwai  and you like pretty movies you should get on those two plus Doctor Zhivago STAT man both the Russian urban and country landscapes are rendered visually stunning (when Varykino is all ice-covered at the end we mean DAMN). In addition the score is completely gorgeous (Maurice Jarre can get it); the frame story is like oikay bye but we like Alec Guinness so that was nice we guess.

So: Just beautiful. David Lean's perfect.

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Suspicion

Ugh god we can feel our body trying to reject the sentiments that we're about to express in the next few sentences (it's relaly a surtghle to kep tynipng) but honesty is the best policy and love thy neighbor and don't take any wooden nickels and all that so here: as major Alfred Hitchcock fans, we were actually pretty disappointed with Suspicion. Joan Fontaine wears glasses and is therefore mousy and destined for spinsterhood (nice parents, Joan) when she meets Cary Grant who is playing a dashing playboy of course on a train; he momentarily forgets his womanizing ways because something about a submissive and docile cute girl with endearing spectacles interests him and he coerces Joan into marrying him (the latter, of course, is smitten within ten seconds because she never thought any man would look at her DAMN THESE SPECTACLES) and she skips out on her parents' giant British country manor to move in with Cary. Everything seems totally fine but then Joan learns Cary is flat broke and has really no intention of dirtying his manicured playboy hands with an honest job for heaven's sakes so this is Joan's first indicator that something is not quite right; when Cary's daffy buddy Nigel Bruce crashes at their mansion and they start whispering together about some land grab plans Joan is uncomfortable and then things just really take a dark turn when Nigel is found dead in London :((((( and Joan starts to suspect that CARY MIGHT BE A MURDERER oi noiiiiii. It's all told from Joan's perspective so we guess the interesting thing about Suspicion is that the audience doesn't know if Joan's fears are founded or if she's actually just super paranoid and it's really getting the best of her in a bad way; besides Nigel's death nothing really actually awful happens so we weren't like super on board with Joan's suspicions but y'know maybe that's the point like she's just going crazy; either way Joan is perfectly cast and she does a great job even though we're not fans of the character of Lina. Cary is charming and idk we weren't convinced by him as a villain (although again you never know if Joan's just losing it) and we don't know, the whole thing never really got up to Hitchcock-anxiety levels of emotion for us and we feel a little bad because everyone seems to love it but what can you do we cannot tell a lie, pals.

So: Probably not the first Hitchcock you want to see. Joan was the only person to win an acting Oscar for a Hitchcock movie though you go gurl