ABOVE SUSPICION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 247, 17 March 1944, Page 12

ABOVE SUSPICION

(M-G-M)

"QOH" says Joan Crawford, "we’re going to be spies. Just like in the movies." And just like in the movies it is when Miss Craw-

ford and Fred MacMurray, two Yanks at Oxford, agree to combine a honeymoon in pre-war Germany with a Dangerous Assignment for the British Foreign Office-to bring back to England the formula of Germany’s magnetic mine. Sinister figures soon start to flit across their path. A sad blow to any young woman on her honeymoon, especially to one of Miss Crawford’s sartorial tastes, is that she is condemned, for the purposes of the plot, to wear one awful hat throughout. But even sadder blows are to fall. A Nazi general is assassinated at a Liszt concert, thereby creating a messy situation for several people; a former Rhodes Scholar (Basil Rathbone) turns out to be a dirty dog in the Gestapo-cries of "Shame!" and "Impossible!" --~and Miss Crawford gets (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) locked up and messed up in a castle full of Nazis. As against all this, however, one of the most suspicious-looking Germans is revealed as a good man and true (Conrad Veidt): with his aid and a great deal of luck, the Foreign Office gets its plans and the audience gets its happy ending. Above Suspicion is notable for two things: (1) for subduing the spirits of Joan Crawford and particularly Fred MacMurray; (2) for the final screen appearance of that prince of suavity, Conrad -Veidt, who died of a_ heart attack early last year at the age of 50. ,