The Suspect is a well turned out period melodrama, with an excellent leading performance by Charles Laughton. He plays an amiable, hopelessly henpecked shopkeeper who yearns for the affections of pretty stenographer Ella Raines. When he is pushed to brink by wife Rosalind Ivan, Laughton kills her, making the death look like the result of a fall down the stairs. Detective Stanley Ridges, not altogether unsympathetic to Laughton, suspects foul play, but decides to bide his time and allow the suspect to trip himself up. Laughton is on the verge of getting off scot free when he makes the error of trying to stifle his blackmailing neighbor Henry Daniell. Based on the novel This Way Out by James Ronald, this is one of the most thoroughly satisfying American films of mercurial German director Robert Siodmak.
