This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

If you've never seen a Charles Laughton movie, The Suspect is a great one to start with. If you see him in Witness for the Prosecution or Advise and Consent, you'll get to see some great acting, but he's not particularly lovable. I always think of him as being very lovable, sensitive, and gentle, all of which are personified in his performance in The Suspect.Charles is married to Rosalind Ivan, and they have absolutely no love for each other anymore. She continually browbeats him, and as a result, he's moved into bedroom down the hall and asked for a divorce. Then, when he meets the kind, sweet Ella Raines, he's even more motivated to rid himself of Rosalind. Ella is so different from his wife, and she makes him feel like he's getting a second chance. Their scenes together are so tender, it's easy to see why she falls for him, even though it might seem implausible at first glance.While there are some twists to the story, it isn't the plot itself that keeps the audience riveted, it's tension inside Charles Laughton. He's incredibly calm and gentle, so much so that you trust him implicitly and want to leave him in charge of your small children. But, when certain things in the plot threaten his happiness, he very quietly simmers under the surface. This is one of my favorite of his movies and performances. Give it a watch, and then go rent The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Leave it to Charles Laughton to garner more sympathy than his victims while wishing the police would not do their job in The Suspect, a turn of the twentieth century cat and mouse that has you in the killer's corner. Successful, respected merchant Philip is married to Cora, a contemptuous harridan to both father and son. When the son moves to Canada Philip meets a younger woman but honors his vows until the hateful Cora stretches him to the limit and he offs her free of blame by all except Scotland Yard's detective Huxley who doggedly pursues. When an unctuous wife beating neighbor blackmails him he strikes again.The Suspect is an outstanding low key thriller that has you siding with the "villain" given his situation and the venal opponents he faces. Even the investigator has an unctuous intrusive way that offends especially when dealing with the total gentleman and well respected man Philip is. Laughton gives a beautifully measured and restrained performance that evokes great sympathy for a murderer; much of it with silent expressions and glances as well as stretch the part from pathetic to cocksure, tender to hateful. It is one of Laughton's finest and most underrated performances. As the dissipated neighbor poor man's George Sander's, Henry Daniell gives one of his finer efforts especially in the scene where he is spouting cynicism into the next world.For his part, director Robert Siodmak rightfully deserves comparison to Lang and Hitchcock as he delivers half a dozen intense moments with his impeccable display of film language displaying nothing of a grisly nature but only inferring. He also works in some timely comic relief to lift matters and give Philip and us some breathing room as we hope he makes it to the steamship bound for Canada on time.

....so says Cora Marshall (Rosalind Ivan) to her husband Philip (Charles Laughton) as she bewails the bickering state of their marriage. He happens to meet Mary (Ella Raines) and they begin a relationship which Cora finds out about and threatens Philip and Mary. Soon Cora is dead and the tension starts racking up until the last tense scenes. Is Philip a crooked tree or not? It is a good film, not particularly original, but engrossing.Set in Hollywood's London where the fog billows around it looks good and Frank Skinner's musical score swirls around nicely too. Director Robert Siodmak knows how to make this kind of film. ('The Killers' of 1946 is his masterpiece) very well and this is no exception.Laughton is excellent in his role as a kindly man caught up in a bad marriage who meets a younger woman and he holds one's sympathy right to the end. He underplays the role all for the better. Rosalind Ivan as his wife is wonderfully acid and Henry Daniell (Mr Simmons) is good too as a drunk who hits his wife, a rather pathetic but deeply selfish man. Molly Lamont who plays Daniell's wife also shines.Well worth watching.

An excellent domestic drama about a middle-aged man (Charles Laughton) who is trapped in an insufferable marriage. Laughton captures all the mannerisms of the situation, with a happy face for the neighbors masking his true torment. The story gets pushed along when he meets a younger woman (Ella Raines) and starts a relationship, which his devious wife (Rosalind Ivan) finds out about, sending him to the point of panic when she threatens him with social and financial ruin. The next door neighbor (Molly Lamont) is also trapped in an absysmal marriage to an alcoholic and abusive husband (Henry Daniell). One wonders why the writers didn't have Laughton and Lamont as the focus, as she's everything his wife isn't, instead of Raines. It would have saved the movie from becoming another police crime story. In any event, the chemistry seems to work pretty well, with Daniell and Ivan each in their own outstanding way supplying enough venom to propel the movie along, and Laughton excellent as a good man pushed into a corner.