- Directed by Michael Curtiz and based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, The Unsuspected is a wonderfully complicated film that gets Laura's big trick out of the way in the first twenty minutes to make room for myriad other twists and turns. But before the presumed dead Matilda Frazier (Joan Caulfield) even has the chance to pose underneath her magnificent portrait in the family mansion, she discovers that she is married to Steven Howard (Michael North), a man she doesn't even remember. She is also dismayed to learn that her friend Roslyn (Barbara Woodell) has apparently committed suicide, although the audience knows better. Her guardian, famed mystery radio show host Victor Grandison (Claude Rains), is wry as always, but his bratty niece Althea (Audrey Totter) moved in to Matilda's room shortly after stealing Matilda's former fiancé (Hurd Hatfield).
- Concerned for Matilda -- or for her inheritance, at least -- Grandison has the local police detective (Fred Clark) look into the man she supposedly married, but Howard passes every test. In the meantime, Althea makes an effort to steal Howard away from Matilda, too, although those plans are thwarted by disinterest on both the parts of Howard and Matilda. But there's also that creepy character Mr. Press (Jack Lambert), who we last saw sitting in a darkened room watching the lower half of the Hotel Peekskill sign blink KILL, KILL outside his window. One assumes that he was responsible for Roslyn's murder, but what is his connection to Grandison and his family? And is it strange that the actor who played the Invisible Man keeps casting so many dark shadows?
- And it's really those looming shadows and other similar visual flourishes that help to elevate The Unsuspected far above the average film noir. In addition to its great music (by Franz Waxman) and excellent cast (Rains and Totter are both perfect, as is Constance Bennett as comic relief), this film has ten or twelve indelible images captured perfectly by Curtiz and cinematographer Woody Bredell. From Roslyn's hanging silhouette to Grandison reflected in his own rotating phonograph record to lingering shots of chandeliers and wine bottles, the film admirably chooses to show rather than to tell the audience what is going on. And surely I wasn't the only person to gasp audibly in surprise at the shot of (the miraculously non-deceased) Matilda boarding the plane. It's a sign of a great film that it can feature this many twists and never be in danger of losing its audience.
- This was Fred Clark's debut role.
