Suspicion is a 1941 American romantic psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple.

It also features Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, and Leo G. Carroll.

In 1938, handsome, irresponsible playboy Johnnie Aysgarth meets bespectacled Lina McLaidlaw on a train in England and later persuades her to take a walk with him.

However, he returns for a hunt ball a week later and charms her into eventually eloping despite the strong disapproval of her wealthy father, General McLaidlaw.

After a lavish honeymoon and returning to an extravagant house, Lina discovers that Johnnie has no job and no income, habitually lives on borrowed money, and was intending to try to sponge off her father.

Beaky, Johnnie's good-natured but naive friend, tries to reassure Lina that her husband is a lot of fun and a highly entertaining liar.

She repeatedly catches Johnnie in ever more significant lies, discovering that he was fired weeks before for embezzling from Melbeck, who says he will not prosecute if the money is repaid.

In November 1939, Nathanael West was hired as a screenwriter by RKO Radio Pictures, where he collaborated with Boris Ingster on a film adaptation of the novel.

When RKO assigned Before the Fact to Hitchcock, he already had his own, substantially different, screenplay, credited to Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville.

As William L. De Andrea states in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994), Suspicionwas supposed to be the study of a murder as seen through the eyes of the eventual victim.

However, because Cary Grant was to be the killer and Joan Fontaine the person killed, the studio — RKO — decreed a different ending, which Hitchcock supplied and then spent the rest of his life complaining about.

[2] He wanted an ending similar to the climax of the novel, but the studio, more concerned with Cary Grant's "heroic" image, insisted that it be changed.

In both versions, Johnnie freely admits that he would not mind the general's death because he expects Lina to inherit a substantial fortune, which would solve their financial problems.

Hitchcock's recollection of this original ending—in his book-length interview with François Truffaut, published in English as Hitchcock/Truffaut in 1967—is that Lina's letter tells her mother she knows that Johnnie is killing her, but that she loves him too much to care.

Whenever Lina is happy with Johnnie — starting with a ball organised by General McLaidlaw — Johann Strauss's waltz "Wiener Blut" is played in its original, light-hearted version.

By placing a lightbulb in the milk, the filmmakers made the contents appear to glow as the glass is carried upstairs by Johnnie, further enhancing the audience's fear that it is poisoned.

Seeing the word, Lina looks at the flyer showing the cliffs Johnnie and Beaky plan to inspect for a real estate venture the next morning.

If the viewer accepts Johnnie's statements in the final scene and decides that he is, for all his faults, no murderer, the film becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of suspicion based only on assumed, incomplete, and circumstantial evidence.

However, given his behaviour up to this point, it is not clear why Johnnie's assertions should be readily believed; in effect, the film leaves the viewer in a perpetual state of suspense as to what the truth is and what might happen next.

[5] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 97% approval rating based on 33 reviews, the critical consensus stating, "Not even notorious studio meddling can diminish the craft and tantalizing suspense of Suspicion, a sly showcase for Joan Fontaine's nervy prowess and Alfred Hitchcock's flair for disquiet.