Discussing the many differences between the novel and film (scripted by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville) is difficult without giving away too much; suffice it to say that Johnnie’s offenses in the movie pale beside what he does in the book, including goading Lina’s father into a fatal heart attack and seducing most of the women in their social circle.
Francis Iles is one of several pseudonyms used by British crime writer Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893-1971). Cox started out as a journalist and humorist, but in the mid-1920s he began to write detective stories, mostly under the name Anthony Berkeley. He was instrumental in organizing many of his fellow British mystery writers into the Detection Club in 1930—an organization that still exists today. He continued as a prolific writer of mysteries, as well as psychological thrillers under his Iles pseudonym, until 1939, when he suddenly stopped, devoting the rest of his career mainly to book reviewing. A very private person, he never explained the abrupt end of his career as a crime writer, though there were rumors he resented the high taxes he had to pay on his literary earnings. In 1941, his 1932 book Before the Fact was made into the film Suspicion by Alfred Hitchcock and won the Best Actress Oscar for Joan Fontaine. Like the novel, the film centers on mousey Lina McLaidlaw, who appalls her family and friends by falling in love with charming but dishonest Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant); after their marriage, as Lina learns of his lies and crimes, she begins to suspect that he ultimately plans to murder her for her insurance money. Discussing the many differences between the novel and film (scripted by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, and Alma Reville) is difficult without giving away too much; suffice it to say that Johnnie’s offenses in the movie pale beside what he does in the book, including goading Lina’s father into a fatal heart attack and seducing most of the women in their social circle. The film’s ending has always been controversial, and Hitchcock biographers and critics are divided as to whether he was forced by the studio to modify the plot or always intended to alter the book’s ending in some way. In either case, both book and film are extremely entertaining, though very different, and definitely worth comparing.