With Above Suspicion, Joan Crawford tries her hand at a screwbally variation on two Alfred Hitchcock capers: The Man Who Knew Too Much and Foreign Correspondent (it also has a dash of the Thin Man films). She and Fred MacMurray play Oxford newlyweds recruited by the British secret service to gather information while honeymooning in Germany in early 1939. Released in 1943, Above Suspicion‘s propaganda is thick (much of the banter involves bashing Germans in general and Nazis in particular), but the tone is consistently light. Crawford is funny and quick, if a bit impersonal compared to her more emotionally prickly performances. MacMurray is fine, but no Cary Grant (who had his own Hitchcock spy movies in Notorious and North by Northwest). In the same vein, director Richard Thorpe (who would make The Thin Man Goes Home the next year) is no master of suspense. Above Suspicion moves along at a good clip, but the handful of action scenes we get are perfunctory at best. In short, fun enough, but I’ve named a number of movies that have done it better.
