Very meta, especially for 1947, The Unsuspected is a crime thriller about a murder at the home of the host of a true-crime podcast – whoops, radio show. The show is called The Unsuspected too, and is hosted by Victor Grandison, those names suggesting he’s both victorious and grandiose. It’s obviously him wot dunnit, innit? Even though he was live on air at the time? Let’s see.
Victor is played by Claude Rains. And if there was just one reason for watching this fast and fun thriller he’d be it. But in fact there are plenty.
Big-house murder-mystery is the big idea, with lots of suspects to point the finger at once murder – done up to look like suicide – has been established. The dead woman was Victor’s assistant. Only an assistant, so throwing a birthday party for Victor shortly after her death seems entirely OK as far as everyone is concerned. Which is where we meet the suspects, a rum bunch.
Victor’s too-finicky producer and business manager, Jane (Constance Bennett). His poisonous niece Althea (Audrey Totter). Her drunk and ineffectual husband, Oliver, played by Hurd Hatfield, who’d played the lead in the movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray only two years earlier – so potentially gay. The list of suspects is topped off by the late arrival of another off-centre male. Steven Howard (Ted North) claims he is the husband of Matilda (Joan Caulfield), Victor’s ward. According to his story, they met and married in a rush before she was lost at sea. So two recently dead people and a party?
Matilda wasn’t just Victor’s ward she was also very wealthy. It turns out that she’s not dead at all but has survived her ordeal and is suffering from (convenient) amnesia. In other words she’s unable to expose Steven – if indeed he is not her husband as everyone suspects. Being rich, Matilda is a natural target. Steven’s defence – he’s from old money and has no need of her wealth – seems also too convenient to be true.
It’s all great fun. Michael Curtiz directs with real speed and the dialogue is fast paced and acidic. There is a relentless hum of sexual innuendo, with Althea the source of much of it, though producer Jane also has her moments. It’s Althea’s tits, though, that win out – Totter moves them about like they have are a separate character, with motivation of their own.
At the centre of it all Rains’s performance. Though he’s always remembered now as the Vichy French officer in Casablanca who turned out not to be such a bad sort, Rains was also the man who played the villainous Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Which one are we getting here? That’s the nub on which the plot spins, and Rains makes the most of it.
Once Matilda turns up, in the shape of Joan Caulfield, we have the extra bonus of the classic film noir good girl pitted against Totter’s bad girl Althea. As things come to a climax, Matilda is swathed head to toe in shimmering white, while Althea is in something sheer and very black.
Inappropriate affection bubbles along almost subsonically – Grandison is Matilda’s guardian, which seems odd since she is a grown woman. She calls him “darling” repeatedly. Althea addresses all men as “lover” – and quite a few of them probably have been.
Elegance is the watchword though, from Curtiz’s direction to Rains’s performance, and Elwood Bredell’s subtle cinematography is a thing of gorgeousness. Often shooting against the light, and casting long, ominous shadows, he makes The Unsuspected a visual treat.
It’s completely obvious who the killer is from fairly early on, and also obvious how they did it. But watching the character walk into the reveal is beautifully contrived. It’s the unravelling of the alibi that we’re watching, not detective work.
The Unsuspected – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
