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All Movie Info
Starring:
Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, Wallace Ford, Irving Bacon, Clarence Muse, Janet Shaw, Edna May Wonacott, Charles Bates, Estelle Jewell
Directed By:
Alfred Hitchcock
Written By:
Gordon McDonell, Thornton Wilder
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Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
April 16th, 2008
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'Shadow of a Doubt' was said to be Hitchcock's favorite movie, which I suppose doesn't mean he regarded it as his best, because it isn't, but it does stand, along with Notorious, as probably his best film from the 1940s; his greatest string of classics would come in the 1950s and end with Psycho in 1960, but this sequence contained Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. 'Shadow of a Doubt' is sorely underrated, an undiscovered gem in the Hitchcock canon, like Lifeboat or The 39 Steps or Spellbound. It features the superb young actress Teresa Wright, who won an Oscar for her role in Mrs. Miniver, but truly shines here as a young woman who begins to suspect that her beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) may actually be a serial killer. Cotton, who starred in both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, gives his finest performance as the charming yet sinister Charlie, who pays a sudden visit to his older sister and her family, who are all delighted to see him. We know from the beginning that he is being watched by the police.
His niece Charlie (Wright) is a smart and pretty girl, and is positively beaming when her uncle arrives, but then she starts to notice his strange behavior, he hides some pages from a newspaper and has sudden mood swings, and then there are the initials carved into a ring he gives her, one that he could have very well stolen from one of his victims, who consist of wealthy old widows. Of course, it is uncertain initially if Charles really is a murderer, Hitchcock teases us by making it obvious that he most definitely is a suspect, but since you can never quite trust the cops to get it completely right, it is possible that Charles is totally innocent. Charlie has her own suspicions, but cannot confirm them. Two detectives show up posing as reporters; one of them, Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey) falls for Charlie, but cannot tell her for sure if her uncle is the guy they want. They simply want to observe him, maybe ask him some questions.
The cat-and-mouse game between Wright and Cotten lies at the center of the movie; he is hiding something, and she seeks to find out what it is. She eventually tries to avoid Charles as much as she can, and like Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, she thinks that Charles is trying to kill her, to silence her, after she nearly falls down a flight of stairs (one mysteriously breaks under her feet) and gets locked in a garage filled with car exhaust. That Charles is responsible for these "accidents" may seem well-established, but he is never caught in the act. So, there is at least some doubt, although it may not be that strong. The truth comes out in the end, in a brilliantly shot train scene, where characters dangle perilously near the edge of an open door, inches away from death, as the train begins to pick up speed. 'Shadow of a Doubt' is a smart and superb thriller, with the added bonus of sharply morbid humor, in the exchanges between Charlie's father Joseph (Henry Travers) and his pal Herbie Hawkins (Hume Cronyn), who describe the various ways they could kill one another.
There is also Ann, Charlie's youngest sister, a delightfully observant bookworm. There is also the issue of sexual tension between the two Charlies; there are times when the uncle almost seems to desire his niece, shows signs of jealousy when she spurns him for another suitor, his insistence on physical contact and being in close proximity to her. She seems proud to be seen with him; her girlfriends all seem envious when they spot her with the older, mysterious, and alluring man. These are topics best discussed in academic articles and the like, which could delve more deeply into the movie's psychological dimensions.
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