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My Easy Marketplace - Above Suspicion (1943)
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $39.95
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Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Starring: Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Conrad Veidt, Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen
Directed By: Richard Thorpe
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302224313
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6302224314
Label: MGM (Warner)
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Warner)
Release Date: 1994-03-07
Running Time: 90
Studio: MGM (Warner)
Theatrical Release Date: 1943-05
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: spies like us
Comment: I really love this movie. "Above Suspicion" was Joan's final studio-system picture for MGM and her final feature movie until her worldwide hit, "Mildred Pierce." In this picture, Joan plays Frances Myles or Mrs. Edward Smith. This is a fast-moving, war-era movie involving a newlywed couple (Joan and Fred Mcmurray) as they play spies in Europe. Sadly, Joan always hated this movie, when asked about it many years later she only said: no prize for this one either.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Above Suspicion (1943) ... Joan Crawford & Fred MacMurray ... MGM Film Noir Classics"
Comment: MGM Studios present "ABOVE SUSPICION" (1943) (90 mins/B&W) (Dolby digitally remastered) --- Starring Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Conrad Veidt, Basil Rathbone & Reginald Owen. --- Directed by Richard Thorpe.and released May1943, our story line and film, About to set off on his 1939 honeymoon, an Oxford don is approached by the Foreign Office --- Knowing war is near, they need to get information back from an unknown source in Germany attempting to smuggle back information about a new super weapon being developed by the Nazis and ask for his help, which he readily offers --- At first, the American couple find following the secret trail great fun but as they get deeper into southern Germany they realize real danger threatens them both --- Joan and Fred single-handedly outwit Nazi Germany (it seems) in this fun movie with great production values and a well matched pair of stars, both of whom seem to be enjoying themselves greatly --- Good entertainment with some amusing dialogue and light-hearted performances by Joan and Fred that indicate they should have been teamed more than once --- As it is, this is Joan Crawford's last film at Metro after seventeen years with the studio and comes just two years before "Mildred Pierce" (1945) at Warners --- Good cast and fine production values make it an absorbing treat, Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray made a great team --- MacMurray had the skill to team well with every leading lady he worked with --- It was great to see Crawford work with Conrad Veidt again, they worked well in "A Woman's Face" (1941) ... Mr. Veidt died in 1943, this was his last movie.
Under Richard Thorpe (Director), Victor Saville (Producer), Melville Baker (Screenwriter), Patricia Coleman (Screenwriter), Helen MacInnes (Book Author), Keith Winter (Screenwriter), Robert Planck (Cinematographer), Bronislau Kaper (Composer (Music Score),George Hively (Editor),Randall Duell (Art Director), Cedric Gibbons (Art Director), Leon Gordon (Associate Producer),Hugh Hunt (Set Designer), Edwin B. Willis (Set Designer), Irene (Costume Designer), Gile Steele (Costume Designer), Jack Dawn (Makeup),Warren Newcombe (Special Effects) - - - - the cast includes Joan Crawford (Frances Myles), Fred MacMurray (Richard Myles), Conrad Veidt (Hassert Seidel), Basil Rathbone (Sig von Aschenhausen), Reginald Owen (Dr. Mespelbrunn), Richard Ainley (Peter Galt), Cecil Cunningham (Countess), Ann Shoemaker (Aunt Ellen), Sara Haden (Aunt Hattie), Felix Bressart (Mr. A. Werner), Johanna Hofer (Frau Kleist), Lotte Palfi (Ottilie), Peter Lawford (Bit Part) - - - - Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic mediums as well...the low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode are in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with Mannerism and the Baroque...film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, scultpture, and architecture...opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners...Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). M was also the occasion for the first star performance by Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era ... featuring top performances from the '40s and '50s with outstanding drama and screenplays, along with a wonderful cast and supporting actors to bring it all together ... another winner from the vaults of almost forgotten film noir gems
SPECIAL FEATURES BIOS:
1. Joan Crawford (aka: Lucille Fay LeSueur)
Date of Birth: 23 March 1905 - San Antonio, Texas
Date of Death: 10 May 1977 - New York, New York
2. Fred MacMurray
Date of Birth: 30 August 1908 - Kankakee, Illinois
Date of Death: 5 November 1991 - Santa Monica, California
3. Conrad Veidt
Date of Birth: 22 January 1893 - Potsdam, Germany
Date of Death: 3 April 1943 - Hollywood, California
4. Basil Rathbone
Date of Birth: 13 June 1892 - Johannesburg, South Africa
Date of Death: 21 July 1967 - New York, New York
5. Richard Thorpe (Director)
Date of Birth: 24 February 1896 - Hutchinson, Kansas
Date of Death: 1 May 1991 - Palm Springs, California
Hats off and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Bob Nareau (author of "The Real Bob Steele") and Trevor Scott (Down Under Com) as they have rekindled my interest once again for Film Noir, B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on VHS, stay tuned once again for top notch action mixed with deadly adventure --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out VCI Entertainment where they are experts in releasing B-Westerns and Serials --- all my heroes have been cowboys!
Total Time: 90 min on VHS ~ MGM (Warner) Video ~ (5/07/94)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Exciting Spy Film
Comment: I love Joan Crawford, but for some reason, whenever I see a movie whose plot revolves around World War II, I turn away. However, I am always pleasantly surprised by the films when I actually force myself to watch them; this one is no different.
Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray star as two American spies on their honeymoon travelling through a war-torn Europe sending messages and enjoying the sights. The entire thing is an adventure to them which gets their toes tingling and blood boiling so the movie has an exciting tone throughout. There are also plenty of twists and turns which leave you guessing.
Crawford and MacMurray work well together and balance well. Neither stand out too strongly, which is amazing since Crawford is so present in her films. This is not an insult to her; this is a compliment to MacMurray who holds his own against such a bright star.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Haunted Honeymoon
Comment: Richard Thorpe made so many wonderful movies and this is by no means the best, but it's still a five star escape. Thorpe isn't a flashy director, but he gets the job done; admiring MGM executives called him the "Thorpedo" for his quiet but deadly accurate aim and efficiency. This spy adventure perfectly melds two unlikely co-stars. Joan Crawford, her last film for MGM, you might think it was something awful, the way Bette Davis complained about her final pictures for Warners. I guess I always thought that ABOVE SUSPICION was a B-movie comedown for Crawford and I'm shocked how good it looks. I don't know how they pried Fred McMurray away from Paramount, but whoever had the idea to borrow him for this role should have gotten a bonus. I suppose part of the inspiration was that MGM had very few of its male stars left, for in a burst of patriotism all of them had joined the war effort, so that stars like Crawford had to play against fellows from other studios (her previous film had paired her with John Wayne of all people). In any case, Fred McMurray, so good at comedy, so good at hard-edged noir parts, gets to play a bit of both here, though why on earth they decided to cast him as a professor at Oxford I'll never figure out. Wouldn't Harvard have been distinguished enough? How many American professors were at Oxford in the summer of 1939 anyhow?
Joan Crawford may be a bit too old to play a young bride (in what would today be the Reese Witherspoon role), but she is excellent in every way, kittenish, amused, sophisticated and yet all-American, she shows a kind of light-hearted sweetness you don't see her using often. If all of her films had had her in this light comic role, she wouldn't have been "Joan Crawford," but no one would have believed Christina's charges about the coat hanger, etc. She's totally enchanting in this part and I love the way she sings "Only A Bird In A Gilded Cage," as an example of an American folk song! When she gets nervous, she twists her ankle, and she does it often in this movie, a charming tic that nearly proves the death of her and yet saves her life of course in the film's final reels.
The way the two lovebirds look through the Liszt book and find three minute little holes on one page, and the deductions they draw from these holes, will leave you gasping with audacity, it's so ridiculous. Those three holes should stand in for the holes in the plot, but somehow Thorpe's speed and visual acumen carry the day.
For me, the big question is, what happened to Bruce Lester? In this film, Lester plays Thornley, the talented pianist who practices Liszt at the Kleist guest house the afternoon of the big concert at which he does something shocking (I won't give away the plot). He isn't a big guy, but he had a perfect gleam and shine to him as only the greatest stars do. I remember him playing Bingley in the classic PRIDE AND PREJUDICE with Greer Garson and Olivier; and he also has a fairly large part in THE LETTER. Here he plays a heroic, romantic part, the sort of thing Ronald Colman used to say was a far, far better thing than ever he had done before; and he does it better than Colman would have! He's amazingly good-looking, sort of puts McMurray and Rathbone in the shade. But what's the back story, why did he never become a bigger star?
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise!
Comment: "Above Suspicion" was a pleasant surprise for this reviewer. Set in Europe at the dawn of WW2, it is relatively anonymous. AS certainly does not rise to the lofty levels of those Wartime classics. Yet there is much to praise here. The strong cast consists of Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen and Conrad Veidt. Newlyweds Fred and Joan are "drafted" into working for British intelligence while on their honeymoon. The two Americans will be "above suspicion" whilst poking about Germany and Austria for military secrets: A mysterious man will lead them to another murky individual who will give them the treasured documents Brit Intelligence seeks. If this appears rather incredible in print, it is also improbable on screen. Yet AS works thanks to several factors: There is fine chemistry twixt MaCMurray and a toned down Crawford. The swift pacing helps viewers overlook the flaws in the plot. The supporting cast is excellent. Rathbone is no Sherlock Holmes here, but a true bad guy. And Veidt is no Major Stasser (of "Casablanca" fame) but an unlikely good guy- a well-mannered Germanic gentlemen who hates the Nazis.(In real life, Veidt had no use for Hitler, left Germany, and became a British citizen!).Finally there are cute teasers. Several scenes mean nothing regarding the resolution; they are there to fool us. The other weakness is the staging: This reviewer traveled to Bavaria while stationed over there. These are not the German Alps! AS was probably shot on a Hollywood lot. (AS does carry a veritable carload of pro-War propaganda, an attribute shared by many other releases of the era). The final verdict is that AS is recommended, with one demerit for the holes in the plot and those faux Alpine backdrops. A closing thought: Isn't it nice to see Major Strasser on the side of the good guys? Bogey might even regret shooting the guy!
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