Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) – A. Hitchcock

I hadn’t revisited this Hitchcock classic (in some reports, his personal favorite) for a number of years and it’s great.  With the assistance of Thornton Wilder (Our Town), Hitch contrasts a highly insulated (insular?) American small town with a darker uglier world outside.  He does this by showing the effects of the arrival of evil Uncle Charlie (the Merry Widow murderer – Joseph Cotten) on his heretofore innocent niece, Young Charlie (Teresa Wright).  As the Master of Suspense (but not surprise), Hitch is able to prolong the audience’s anxiety about Uncle Charlie and his doings, as the detectives descend on Santa Rosa (the town) and Young Charlie cottons on.  He also takes the opportunity to work in his classic themes – the banality of evil (and “wrong-doing”) and the complicity of guilt -- and to display his transgressive sense of humor (for example, Young Charlie’s father Henry Travers and neighbor Hume Cronyn read true crime magazines and plot each other’s murders). The movie is full of rhymes, starting with the two Charlies and extending to matching or doubled scenes, two suspects, two detectives, and so on.  One of Hitchcock’s most subversively wicked and fully realized films.