![]() Hitchcock has been content to hint, and he has in his camera and soundtrack allies cunning in the art of suggestion. the shadow of a doubt looms larger and more substantial until at last young Charlie knows, and, in knowing, stands in danger of her life. two men posing as social survey officials turn out to be detectives. There is a man, wanted for what are known as the "Merry Widow" murders. Joseph Cotten) is gay, handsome, and rich, he represents a wider world and a freer way of living, but before long doubts begin to intrude. To all of them it is a pleasant break in the daily round, but to Charlie ( Miss Teresa Wright), a girl at the age when restlessness and dissatisfaction move in the blood, it means more. The Newton family lives peacefully and uneventfully in California, and the domestic calm is pleasantly ruffled by the news that Emma Newton's brother is to visit them. In his last two or three films he had shown a disturbing tendency to substitute mechanical tricks for psychological subtlety as his means of building up an atmosphere of suspense, but here he succeeds, where in Suspicion he lamentably failed, and the attention of the audience is riveted as much on the nature of the characters as on the plot in which they are involved. Alfred Hitchcock at his best, and a good Hitchcock film is one of the greatest treats the cinema has to offer. ![]() keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Suspicion (1941), Teresa Wright.And, it should be distinguished, cynicism is not the same as nihilism. It seems unlikely that Charlie would become like her uncle, however she exhibits none of the same compulsions he proved unable to control, nor shows the same stomach for violence that he had. After all, before accidentally killing him, Charlie did threaten to kill him if he harmed her mother. Her only confidant is the detective Graham, whose vocation is to confront and defend the world from this evil (by preserving the prevailing hegemony’s status quo), but even he’s not able to see everything she can and, further, appears ignorant to the sexual tension between the two Charlies as he obliviously makes his own overtures to her.Īfter the closing scene, one could imagine Young Charlie growing into a world-weary cynicism not unlike the one espoused by her uncle. We’re told, through exposition by his sister Emma, that the symptoms began after a childhood accident from which he never quite recovered.įor Young Charlie, the realization of evil’s existence makes an irrevocable change in her life - though she does her best to contain and shield her family from it. On the train to Santa Rosa (which arrives in a cloud of black smoke), he feigns illness to keep a low profile from the other passengers, but he is sick in another sense. Uncle Charlie is that sickness made manifest. And Young Charlie can feel it like a psychic force before her uncle’s arrival. There are glimpses of it in the seedy bar where Young Charlie’s friend Louise works - the closest Santa Rosa comes to looking like the outside world we see at the beginning. It’s suggested by the conversations about ways to get away with murder between Young Charlie’s father and his neighbor Herbie. The uncovering of that evil may have coincided with the arrival of Uncle Charlie, but it was always there - or at least the capacity for it. Asked to summarize the overall theme of Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock offered: "Love and good order is no defense against evil.” Hitchcock shows us that, even in the American suburban home of the idyllic nuclear family, there is a sickness of evil lurking beneath the surface.
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