Ein gefährlicher Rivale

The was the biggest budget film ever for Monogram Pictures and it is evident in this very well produced nightclub noir from 1946. British skating star known as BELITA was the queen of Monogram for a few years and the money spent on her 40s musicals LADY LET'S DANCE and SILVER SKATES proved what an asset she truly was. The reviews for LADY famously declared: "Mega budget time on poverty row" - with half a dozen extravagant big band music sequences with herself zipping about in all sorts of incredible costumes. SUSPENSE made in '46 is almost the same story as GILDA made the same year at Columbia. However Rita couldn't skate and Belita wasn't Rita. but, in it's own way SUSPENSE is an excellent thriller with some of the most bizarre and creepy scenes I have seen in a 40s noir drama. The best of which actually occurs in a dance-skate number which I can only describe as: set imagery from Salvador Dali mixed with a quite obvious S&M costume design (spangly scimitars on Belita's bosom, black hot-pants, cape and stockings (!) and a horror stunt involving a doorway of jagged wiggly iron swords (yes the jaws of death) that our gorgeous lead actress must skate towards and jump through..... backwards! All to a pulsating kettledrum gonging away. Imagine being in the front row for that! Producers, King Bros were rewarded at Monogram by massive ($4m+) USA rentals from DILLINGER in 1945 and the head office put up a handsome budget for this film. It cost $1.1m, a record spend for Monogram and put the studio in the A league for a while. Following a stream of noir successes like THE GANGSTER Monogram stepped up a few rungs on the Hollywood ladder and changed their name to ALLIED ARTISTS. They used these strong profits to make IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE, FRIENDLY PERSUASION in '56 and in the 70s, went on to produce CABARET and THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. The skating dance shows in SUSPENSE are very spectacular and it is a quite a surprise how big and crowded the nightclub sets are. the penthouse scenes are 10 years ahead of Forbidden Planet in their snazzy moderne style. This is a good film, unjustly neglected. And Belita deserves to be rediscovered before she skates off into the sunset: apart from being a genuine astonishing beauty, she can act, skate and give lip service in that most attractive slovenly way that saw Bacall snare Bogey. Belita can do that and skate too. What a doll! For fans of all things kitsch, the nightclub is the same one seen in 1980 in XANADU ooooooo-h-oooo.

A very trippy film noir.

Noiristas, make this a must because it has an inventive approach to it's noir story. Plenty of ice skating, rumba music and lions. The leading lady, Belita, is a treat. Barry Sullivan is superb. My favorite Sullivan performance.

Director Frank Tuttle and his cinematographer Karl Struss provide plenty of visual panache to make up for writer Philip Yordan's so-so script.

Yordan does deliver plenty of great noir lines for the actors to chew on.

I've seen Suspense three times now and appreciate it a little more each time. It's weird. I'm recommending a freaking ice skating noir.

Super-aggressive Joe Morgan tries to take over impresario Frank Leonard's ice show and his girl, for good measure, resulting in some strange consequences.

With all the interest in 40's noir, I'm not sure why this genuinely exotic little number is too often overlooked. Maybe it's because its pedigree is not the best, (cheap-jack Monogram), or because its cast is non-movie star, (Sullivan, Belita, Dekker), or the fact that it doesn't turn up on cable (to my knowledge). Nonetheless, in my book it's one of the best examples around of the lost art of b&w cinematography.

Consider, for example, what Belita's surreal, death-defying skating number would look like in color, or that distance shot of the noirish mountain bowl where Frank stalks his prey, or the big neon panel blinking through the fog. In fact, consider the values that would be lost if the entire film were in color. I think one reason many of us return to 40's noir is because of those dream-like shadings,(among other values), that simply can't be duplicated in reds and greens, etc. Then too, these b&w shadings are a perfect complement to the ambiguities pervading the best noir.

But it's not only the photography in this movie, it's also the art direction (Paul Sylos) and the set decoration (George Hopkins). Thanks to them, the spooky ice rink plus the cavernous apartment and lodge interiors achieve real visual distinction with their attention to artistic detail. And even after multiple viewings, I haven't figured out how they did that eerie mountain bowl with its rink at the bottom. That tableau remains unlike anything I've seen in film. All in all, these elements add up, in my book, to a superior slice of visual exotica from noir's golden age.

To me, the most notable part of the story itself is how basically unsympathetic Joe (Sullivan) is with his overweening aggressiveness as he cuts in on everything Frank (Dekker) owns or values. At the same time, I don't buy the climax that looks like some version of the Hollywood Code in action, even if only in diluted form. Nonetheless, it's a great cast from the gimlet-eyed Sullivan (he doesn't look like anyone else in movies) to the commanding Dekker to the froggishly likable Palette. And must not forget Belita's eye-catching wardrobe or the deglamorized Granville getting jilted every five-minutes. And please tell me when ace screen-writer Yordan ever drew a breath away from the typewriter since his name pops up on just about everything from this period.

Anyhow, in my book, the movie remains a real sleeper and visual treat, and TMC would do well to slip it somewhere into their evening schedule.

When a young Olympic figure skater decides to take up acting, it had to be with some skating sequences. While these were somewhat entertaining, they make the film about ten minutes longer. Since the title is "Suspense," this detracts a bit. Still it has many noir qualities with the taciturn Barry Sullivan pretty much running things. it is a romantic triangle where the third is one too many. Actually, a fourth comes into playas well. Joe, Sullivan's character, has significant baggage. Would this have brought him down eventually? Anyway, it was some fun with reasonable good acting by most of the figures.

Just the title alone should tell you that you won't see anything like a Sonja Henie movie. Great Britain's answer to Henie, Belita stars in this noir thriller about the star skater caught between two men.

Peanut vendor Barry Sullivan has some ideas that catch the attention of ice show owner Albert Dekker and he promotes him to the show management. Sullivan also gets ideas about Belita as he rises the ladder of success.

For a Monogram Picture this one looks like a few bucks were spent on it. The ice sequences match anything in a Sonja Henie movie.

Bonita Granville has a real adult role and acts real adult. The juvenile tattletale in These Three and the screen's Nancy Drew, Granville plays the scorned other woman in Sullivan's life and does well.

Suspense was Eugene Pallette's farewell performance. Mr. Pallette retired after this film and went to live in the wild country in Oregon's more rural area. He was a man of strong rightwing convictions and was sure that we could expect atomic war from the Russians. I wonder if when he died in 1954 he was disappointed.

For a Monogram film this noir is not a bad one with an unusual setting.