Wonderful character development!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

This is from the director and screenwriter of Mildred Pierce -- but don't let that get your hopes up. The plot and dialogue have to be experienced to be believed. And except for Rains, having fun hamming it up, the cast is dreadful. It barely makes sense, and is utterly unbelievable at any rate.The Rains character kills off one character after another, and no one around him seems to suspect a thing, despite the fact that he gives himself away in his ridiculous radio scripts, allegedly true crime tales that he reads plummily with a live orchestra in the background.Curtiz keeps it all watchable, although it could be shorter. He does provide a nice touch or two, as when the camera moves toward the dark front of a radio speaker and the shot dissolves to a train tunnel.Michael North, as the bland hero, and Audrey Totter, as a sharp-tongued floozy, provide stiff and amateurish line readings that are somewhat entertaining in themselves. Hurd Hatfield is more convincing in the less than inspired part of a weak, drunkard husband. Joan Caulfield mystifyingly gets top billing over Rains.Was this really an 'A' picture at Warner Bros.? It's campy fun, but nowhere near the classic Macdougal and Curtiz had recently produced with Joan Crawford.

This is certainly one of the most lushly photographed of all noirs. Hardly a set-up goes by without an eye-catching furbelow of one kind or another, thanks to cameraman Woody Bredell and Art Director Anton Grot. That's one main reason to catch up with this otherwise turgid 1947 release. Then too, except for the unfortunate Ted North, it's a stellar cast from the sleekly malevolent Rains to the coldly conniving Totter to the wittily sophisticated Bennett. However, I suspect that's one reason this richly endowed exercise failed to achieve classic status— just too many stars with too many lines that multiply subplots in a rather poorly thought-out storyline. There's simply not enough coherence and focus to generate the desired suspense of, say, a Rebecca (1940) or a Suspicion (1941), both of which the screenplay resembles. This results in a movie of bits and pieces, and a good chance to catch up with post-war high fashion. And catch that salvage yard from hell that turns up at the end, along with the behind-the-scenes glimpse of radio drama or what was then aptly called "the theater of the mind". Anyway, no movie with the commanding Claude Rains can afford to be passed up, here at his cultured and calculating best.

This is a generally well-written murder mystery film. While I liked it, one flaw is that by the end of the film almost everybody has been either killed, attempts were made on their lives or they were the murderer himself--not too many people were left and there just weren't enough red herrings to make it a true mystery. Still, considering the interesting plot and the actors involved, it's still a nifty story.The film begins with a grisly murder that looks like suicide to the police--however, the audience sees the truth that it IS a murder. Soon afterword, a long-lost heiress (Joan Caulfield) to the estate where the murder occurred turns up alive after a ship wreck. Upon returning, she is met by a man who claims to be her husband, though she has no recollection of marrying him. However, his story does appear true and she's left wondering how this could have happened.In addition to this, the lost heiress finds that many of the people who live in her home are weasels. The man she once intended to marry has married a nasty lady (Audrey Trotter) and Caulfield isn't too pleased to have them there. Before she can get around to telling them to leave, they are dead--he apparently killed her and then died while trying to make his getaway. However, in a poor move, the director shows what REALLY happened, as you see Claude Rains arranging the whole thing--though keeping this a secret for a bit longer would have probably made for a more interesting and exciting film.It seems that Caulfield's guardian (Rains) is a radio personality who has expensive tastes and he's been killing anyone who stands in his way. Ultimately his plan is to kill Caulfield to get her millions, but considering that practically everyone is dead or a near-death victim, by now the film starts to unravel a bit. Rains' brilliant alibi no longer seems so brilliant and the film ends on an interesting but anticlimactic note. Having the film end with Rains committing suicide while on the air would have been really exciting! Overall a very good but certainly not great film. It's worth seeing, but it sure could have kept us guessing longer.

Deftly directed by Michael Curtiz and starring a slew of first-rate entertainers such as Claude Rains, Audrey Totter, Constance Bennet, Hurd Hatfield, Joan Caulfield, and the always overlooked Fred Clark, The Unsuspected seems to be in the shadow of other film noir films of the decade(at least by many of the review accounts on here)most notably Laura with Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney. Well, I love Laura and think it is a first-rate film - it is a different kind of film as well. The Unsuspected is generated by different goals and objectives by the lead "killer" if you will. Curtiz is always impressive creating suspense and keeps the pacing of the film very tight and tense. The actors do excellent jobs playing a variety of character types with Claude Rains stealing his scenes as only he can with that deceptively mellifluous voice. Fred Clark plays a detective that somewhat acts as the film's conscience in a way. Clark gives a very subtle yet strong performance. I have always felt he had been overlooked as an actor, because he was so good with comedic roles. At any rate, The Unsuspected is a great mystery thriller with a series of murders, attempted murders, a drugging, a fake identity, and a radio broadcast all figuring into the resolution prominently.