Michael Curtiz knew how to make interesting movies. But just as Casablanca's ad hoc filming was salvaged in the editing room, The Unsuspected - I suspect - was butchered in the same room.
Following the death of Claude Rains' secretary, characters start popping up all over the place. Too many characters. Looking too much alike. We don't know where they came from or why. And then it takes half the movie to explain their connections. It's as if the screenwriter took the source novel but started on Chapter 7.
As for the plot, it hinges on a bad guy always being in the right place at the right time to pull off his schemes. A female lead who has the guile of a goldfish. And a good guy who has the charisma of a stick of wood.
Everybody's made out of cardboard and makes incredibly poor decisions. Frankiy, I still don't know the murderer's motivations.
Rains puts in an excellent performance as always. And it was pretty cool to see Fred Clark in his first credited role, and to learn from TCM's Freddy Mueller that Clark was in Patton's Third Army.
Ultimately, other than effective use of light and shadows, there is nothing that would motivate me to watch this a second time.
If I learned anything watching this movie it's that people in the 1940s smoked too much.
Following the death of Claude Rains' secretary, characters start popping up all over the place. Too many characters. Looking too much alike. We don't know where they came from or why. And then it takes half the movie to explain their connections. It's as if the screenwriter took the source novel but started on Chapter 7.
As for the plot, it hinges on a bad guy always being in the right place at the right time to pull off his schemes. A female lead who has the guile of a goldfish. And a good guy who has the charisma of a stick of wood.
Everybody's made out of cardboard and makes incredibly poor decisions. Frankiy, I still don't know the murderer's motivations.
Rains puts in an excellent performance as always. And it was pretty cool to see Fred Clark in his first credited role, and to learn from TCM's Freddy Mueller that Clark was in Patton's Third Army.
Ultimately, other than effective use of light and shadows, there is nothing that would motivate me to watch this a second time.
If I learned anything watching this movie it's that people in the 1940s smoked too much.