A movie whose plot begs to be described in Red Pill terms: a shy over-educated young heiress finds her jimmies rustled by a bad boy alpha male Johnny (played by the still-famous Cary Grant) and, ignoring her parents, all common sense, and the beta floaters around her, elopes with him, only to discover to her dismay that she’s married a man who could have come straight out of the pages of Cleckley’s 1941 Mask of Sanity (the resemblance is so exact that I was surprised to see that the original novel was written in 1932 and the Suspicion screenplay ~1939) - a glib bankrupt unemployed macho gambler who steals, embezzles, and lies extravagantly without the slightest shred of remorse or shame or any care about how it might hurt others or any plan beyond the instant. The suspicion is raised by a succession of circumstances indicative of killing the protagonist by poison for her life insurance. The ending (to give away a bit of a spoiler) is that she misinterpreted them and really he did love her and he had been contemplating suicide, but now chooses to take responsibility for his actions and go to jail honorably. This ending is so laughably inconsistent with his character, and such a misstep for Hitchcock, I thought that there must be more to this ending and that I should not have been surprised that Hollywood would refuse to show Cary Grant playing a serial murderer; sure enough when I checked WP, the original novel had the right ending and Hitchcock is on record complaining about being forced to change the end. The bogus ending aside, it is well-done and a bit suspenseful (at least once they get married and the real plot; the prologue scenario being so obvious that I was bored) with some noteworthy bits like the final gorgeous sequence of Johnny ascending the stairs with the poisoned milk.
One of the great war movies; the theme of the futility & destructiveness of war can never be emphasized enough. The colonel’s descent into collaborationism is all too easily understood, as is, to a lesser extent, the murderous & death-seeking behavior of the commando officer. The major flaws I would consider to be the Japanese depicted entirely too positively (the first plot arc of the colonel’s resistance, while uplifting, broke a bit of suspension of disbelief because in reality he would probably have simply been executed within the day), the ending is a bit too heavy-handed (did any viewer actually need the doctor to repeat “madness!” 4 or 5 times to get the message?), and too much of the 161 minutes running time is occupied with the resistance arc and then later with the commando squad cutting its way through the jungle.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion
A movie whose plot begs to be described in Red Pill terms: a shy over-educated young heiress finds her jimmies rustled by a bad boy alpha male Johnny (played by the still-famous Cary Grant) and, ignoring her parents, all common sense, and the beta floaters around her, elopes with him, only to discover to her dismay that she’s married a man who could have come straight out of the pages of Cleckley’s 1941 Mask of Sanity (the resemblance is so exact that I was surprised to see that the original novel was written in 1932 and the Suspicion screenplay ~1939) - a glib bankrupt unemployed macho gambler who steals, embezzles, and lies extravagantly without the slightest shred of remorse or shame or any care about how it might hurt others or any plan beyond the instant. The suspicion is raised by a succession of circumstances indicative of killing the protagonist by poison for her life insurance. The ending (to give away a bit of a spoiler) is that she misinterpreted them and really he did love her and he had been contemplating suicide, but now chooses to take responsibility for his actions and go to jail honorably. This ending is so laughably inconsistent with his character, and such a misstep for Hitchcock, I thought that there must be more to this ending and that I should not have been surprised that Hollywood would refuse to show Cary Grant playing a serial murderer; sure enough when I checked WP, the original novel had the right ending and Hitchcock is on record complaining about being forced to change the end. The bogus ending aside, it is well-done and a bit suspenseful (at least once they get married and the real plot; the prologue scenario being so obvious that I was bored) with some noteworthy bits like the final gorgeous sequence of Johnny ascending the stairs with the poisoned milk.
The Bridge over the River Kwai
One of the great war movies; the theme of the futility & destructiveness of war can never be emphasized enough. The colonel’s descent into collaborationism is all too easily understood, as is, to a lesser extent, the murderous & death-seeking behavior of the commando officer. The major flaws I would consider to be the Japanese depicted entirely too positively (the first plot arc of the colonel’s resistance, while uplifting, broke a bit of suspension of disbelief because in reality he would probably have simply been executed within the day), the ending is a bit too heavy-handed (did any viewer actually need the doctor to repeat “madness!” 4 or 5 times to get the message?), and too much of the 161 minutes running time is occupied with the resistance arc and then later with the commando squad cutting its way through the jungle.