{"id":11287,"date":"2013-07-07T18:24:29","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T08:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11287"},"modified":"2014-05-12T17:02:21","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T07:02:21","slug":"shadow-of-a-doubt-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11287","title":{"rendered":"Shadow of a Doubt [1943]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fathitch\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"shadowofadoubt004\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s hard to believe that just one year after he made the earnest, flag-waving ode to Americana that was Saboteur<\/em>, Alfred Hitchcock would follow it up with Shadow of a Doubt<\/em>, a creepy paranoia-inducing thriller about an uncle who visits his sister’s family from out of town.\u00a0 Sweet nature sixteen year old Charlie loves her uncle who has the same name as her but she can’t help but notice that something feels off<\/em> about him.\u00a0 Maybe its the way he has a tendency to grab her by the throat when he loses his temper?\u00a0 Maybe its because he cuts out and collects newspaper articles about a serial killer on the loose who prays on unsuspecting women?\u00a0 Could it be possible that Uncle Charlie is a psychotic, misogynistic mass murderer?<\/p>\n

Shadow of a Doubt<\/em> is one of Hitchcock’s first bona-fide classics.\u00a0 A film that is as creepy and effective today as it was seventy years ago.\u00a0 What’s interesting about the film in relation to Saboteur<\/em> is how the character of Uncle Charlie prays on the gullibility of an idealistic American family who are wide eyed and naive enough to take him completely on face value.\u00a0 In Saboteur<\/em>, the hero of the film only succeeds in his journey thanks to the endless help of anonymous strangers who feel compelled to trust him because its the American thing to do<\/em>.\u00a0 In Shadow of a Doubt<\/em>, the viewer is left tearing their hair out because Joseph and Emma, the unsuspecting parents, are so unsuspecting and miss all the signs that Uncle Charlie is not who he appears to be.\u00a0 Uncle Charlie viciously exploits the trustworthy American idealism that Joseph and Emma believe in.<\/p>\n

Shadow of a Doubt<\/em> is one of the earliest films where we see two Hitchcock trademark’s emerge – the obsession with committing the ‘perfect’ murder and the strong female lead.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the perfect murder.\u00a0 Hitchcock’s fascination with discussing and creating the perfect murder and its prevalence in his body of work reminds me of Stephen King and his obsession with the macabre.\u00a0 King is most famous for his horror stories where details of gruesome and gory deaths feel right at home.\u00a0 Years later, when he mellowed a little and branched out into writing different genres – teenage rite of passage (Stand By Me<\/em>), a Close Encounters<\/em> sci-fi epic (Under The Dome<\/em>) or an honest-to-God romance (11\/22\/63<\/em>), he still can’t help himself and he always<\/em> slips in a bit of gruesome penmanship.\u00a0 Even if its completely at odds with the tone of the story, if there is a murder or a dead body, a switch seems to go off in King’s head where he has<\/em> to describe the sprays of blood, the squishing of brains and the breaking of bones.\u00a0 I imagine he’d be a weird dinner guest that way.\u00a0 He’d probably be super polite and charming but would get derailed describing a rare cut of steak.<\/p>\n

In Shadow of a Doubt<\/em>, the family patriarch Joseph Newton enjoys unwinding with a family friend by flippantly discussing how they would kill one another and get away with it.\u00a0 There’s obviously a purpose to its inclusion in the film as Papa Newton is unwittingly housing a guest who intends to do just that.\u00a0 However, the perfect murder becomes a recurring ingredient in many a Hitchcock film.\u00a0 There are two films,\u00a0Rope\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Stran<\/em>gers On A Train<\/em>, that are explicitly about killing someone for no other reason than seeing if you can get away with it.\u00a0 It also recurs as a plot point in Rear Window<\/em>, The Man Who Knew Too Much<\/em> and The Trouble With Harry<\/em> which all feature someone either discussing or explicitly trying to get away with a calculated murder that isn’t a crime of passion.\u00a0 It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if we ever learned that Hitchcock actually bumped off a guy ‘just ‘cuz.’\u00a0 He obviously spent a lot of time thinking and talking about it.<\/p>\n

The other staple feature of Hitchcock films that we see in Shadow of a Doubt<\/em> is the strong, independent female which is pretty rare in the classic Hollywood era, just as it is today in your average Michael Bay film.\u00a0 Joseph Cotten has the most entertaining role in the film as Uncle Charlie but Teresa Wright is deserving of plaudits for her performance as Young Charlie.\u00a0 Wright is well mannered, good natured and unsuspecting when we first meet her.\u00a0 But unlike her gormless mother and father who continue to think the best of Uncle Charlie despite his weird and erratic behaviour, Young Charlie smells a rat and isn’t afraid to stand her ground.\u00a0 The tension in the final third of the film comes from the moment where both parties lay their cards on the table.\u00a0 Young Charlie tells Uncle Charlie that she knows he has a salty past and Uncle Charlie tells Young Charlie that he has a pathological desire to strangle and mutilate women.\u00a0 Then they carry out their game of cat and mouse while still pretending to be a loving family unit around the rest of the Newtons.<\/p>\n

One aspect of the film that hasn’t aged particularly well is the role of the two detectives who turn up at the Newton’s door, on the hunt for Uncle Charlie.\u00a0 One of the detectives develops a romantic interest in Young Charlie and he’s probably twice her age.\u00a0 She doesn’t exactly lead him on (this is 1940s Hollywood) but she doesn’t exactly turn him down either (this is 1940s Hollywood).\u00a0 The detective is framed as the virtuous long arm of the law which probably wouldn’t sit quite right with modern audiences since he’s trying to stop the murderer but he’s also trying to date and marry your naive 18 year old daughter at the same time.<\/p>\n

Shadow of a Doubt<\/em> is a fine Hitchcock film that excels in a myriad of ways.\u00a0 It’s a fantastic thriller first and foremost.\u00a0 It’s technically a well constructed film.\u00a0 It’s ahead of its time for its subversive content.\u00a0 It’s the first Hitchcock film to include traits that become major recurring themes in his work.\u00a0 And it has a groundbreaking female lead performance from Teresa Wright.<\/p>\n

More Reviews From The FAT Film Guide – Hitchcock Edition<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog [1927]<\/a><\/p>\n

Saboteur [1942]<\/a><\/p>\n

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It’s hard to believe that just one year after he made the earnest, flag-waving ode to Americana that was Saboteur, Alfred Hitchcock would follow it up with Shadow of a Doubt, a creepy paranoia-inducing thriller about an uncle who visits his sister’s family from out of town.\u00a0 Sweet nature sixteen year old Charlie loves her …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1800,5],"tags":[1616,1645,1615],"class_list":["post-11287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-classics","category-films","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-shadow-of-a-doubt","tag-tfw-film-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11287"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14104,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11287\/revisions\/14104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}