The Unsuspected (1947)

I found The Unsuspected when I was looking up what other films were made by director Michael Curtiz, he of Casablanca. It was shot in 1947 and is billed as a film noir, though honestly I’ve seen films more enjoyably noirish than this one.

I features Claude Rains, the only name on the cast list I had really heard of. Then there are Joan Caulfield, Audrey

Totter, Constance Bennett, Hurd Hatfield and Michael North. The name Joan Caulfield kind of rang half a bell, possibly even just a quarter, but as for the rest, zilch.

To quote Norma Desmond ‘I am big. It's the pictures that got small’. Well in world of Totter, Bennett, Hatfield and North the pictures got very small indeed.

As I wrote elsewhere (and didn’t post here as there was no point) 80 years on films such as The Unsuspected can be filed in the box marked ‘curios, to be opened if you really have nothing else to do. I don’t doubt it was. zinger in 1947 and kept folk glued to their seats, but now?

The ‘plot’ is, seen through a modern prism, risible. The set-up is intriguing enough, and you do want to see who it is all resolved – well, I did: what can be the outcome of this.

As it turns out nothing special and wholly contrived. But, hey, this is films, escapism for the post-war generation.

There are one or two colossal plot holes as in one essential premise that goes wholly unexplained and overall . . .

Overall, one for a very rainy afternoon when you have nothing better to do. And if you decide your sock drawer is in any kind of disarray, put The Unsuspected on hold while you sort it out.

I don’t mean to be cruel and in 1947 Curtiz was not making a film for some smart-arse 80 years on, so I shall give it a 6, but that is only in its own terms. A 4 would be more honest.

The poster I have chosen proclaims ‘You can’t forget it’. Well, believe me, chaps, you can.