AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

blanche-2 Well, if Joan Crawford didn't know the end was near for her at MGM, she knew it when she was handed "Above Suspicion," based on the novel of the same name by Helen MacInnes. I read the novel years ago and confess I don't remember much of it.The year is 1939, before war breaks out. Crawford plays a newlywed, and Fred MacMurray her American husband, who teaches at Oxford. The couple are asked by the foreign office to track down someone while honeymooning in Germany, a man who can help the Allies regarding a German secret weapon. This weapon is a magnetic water bomb that is pulled to a ship and explodes. At first, it's fun; then it becomes dangerous.This is an entertaining film in part thanks to a good cast of Crawford, MacMurray, Basil Rathbone, and Conrad Veidt. There are some suspenseful sequences. There is also some real stuff of spy books and films - special hats, song codes, codes on maps and in books."Above Suspicion" doesn't seem very big budget and despite some Bavarian costumes and quaint German towns, it's all Hollywood set. Given the huge films Crawford took part in at MGM, this black and white movie must have seemed like a come-down. It was. Louis B didn't want over the hill actresses - i.e., those over 30. There's nothing special about her part, which could have been done by any MGM stock player. And at 38, for those days, she was a little old to be a bride. Better things were on the horizon for Crawford, though she couldn't have known it at the time.Worth seeing.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Rediculas war time espionage drama that in fact takes place in the early summer of 1939 when there was no war going on in Europe between Germany and Britian. We have this fun loving American couple Frances & Richard Myles, Joan Crawford & Fred MacMurray, traveling on vacation to Nazi Germany in order to obtain for Great Britian the secret blueprint for a magnetic mine that the Germans are working on.Despite the movies title-Beyond Suspicion-the two especially Richard Myles act so obnoxious and suspicious that it's a miracle that the Nazi's didn't suspect them of being spies as soon as they laid eyes on them. That's in Richard's in you face dislike of anything German to the extent of calling a Nazi Gestapo Officer a dope right to his face not once but twice within a minutes time! And getting away with it without being shipped off to the nearest Nazi concentration camp!Instead of the two "dopes" just going to the place where anti-Nazi German scientist Dr. Mespelbrunn, Reginald Owens, is staying at and getting the secret information for the magnetic mine that he invented the two American "spies" for the British Empire are given a myriad of asinine and brain twisting clues, by the British Secret Service, as well as secret hand foot and nose signals! It's these signals,like a catcher and third base coach uses in baseball, that they and their German contacts uses in what seems like every ten seconds in the movie! That to the point where they become almost meaningless to anyone that's watching! This muddles things up so much in the film that by the time the Myles' finally get to meet Dr. Mespelbrunn who's being held hostage in his own house by the Gestapo you and possibly even they forgot what they were there for, the plans for the secret magnetic mine, in the first place!There's also a nice little side plot in the movie, to make things even more confusing, with British tourist Thornley, Bruce Lester, planning to gun down the Commadaunt Col.Gerold, Frank Reicher, of the Nazi concentration camp where his wife was interned and later murdered! Thorney plans to pull this off in the middle of a standing room only Listz concert at the local opera house with hundreds of German soldiers and Gestapo agents in attendance!P.S The movie turned out to be both the last film that Joan Crawford made for the MGM studios and Conrad Veidt's, who played a good guy for once, last movie ever! Veidt died on April 3, 1943 of a massive heart attack, probably after seeing the rushes, before the movie "Above Suspicion" was released. Also check out Basil Rathbone as the mysterious Sig Von Aschenhausen who tries so hard to be what he isn't in the movie that you instinctively know what he is as soon as you get to see him!

sddavis63 For a movie billed as a thriller, there are precious few thrills to be found here. Set in Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II, the story has promise but in the end (and, frankly, all the way through) fails to deliver in any substantive way. The problems come from both the story itself and the performances.In terms of story, there is the above mentioned promise. A British agent has the secrets behind a new German secret weapon, but the British have lost contact with him. Professor Myles (Fred Macmurray), an American teaching at Oxford, is sent along with his new bride Frances (Joan Crawford) to find him, the British believing that as Americans they'll arouse less suspicion as they snoop around the Third Reich. The problem is that I never got any sense of the urgency of the mission. Yes, there's intrigue, and sinister looking Gestapo agents everywhere, but just no sense that this is urgent business. To be honest, it put me to sleep a couple of times.The performances didn't help. I've never been a huge fan of Macmurray anyway. I've never come across any work he's done in which he seems to inject any real energy into a role, and he's no different here. (As an aside, the part of the movie I'll remember best was when I first saw him in his disguise near the end. I laughed at that goofy mustache!) Crawford also disappoints - and the two of them together? If this is the amount of passion the Myles' seem to have for each other as newlyweds, I'd hate to see them once they've been married for ten years. There was no chemistry between these two; nothing that made them believable as a newlywed couple.3/10

Neil Doyle If you like the kind of spy-romance yarns spun out by Hollywood in the 1940s--the kind with tongue-in-cheek dialogue that lets you know you're not supposed to take any of it too seriously--you'll enjoy this amusing, yet suspenseful film in which Conrad Veidt plays a "nice guy" for a change. Honeymooners Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray are asked by British intelligence to do some spying while on their European jaunt. The agreeable pair go along with a plan that has them on the trail of an agent and in and out of dangerous situations as they are pursued by Basil Rathbone, chilling as usual as a Nazi. Good entertainment with some amusing dialogue and light-hearted performances by Joan and Fred that indicate they should have been teamed more than once. As it is, this is Joan Crawford's last film at Metro after seventeen years with the studio and comes just two years before "Mildred Pierce" at Warners. Good cast and fine production values make it an absorbing treat.