Shadow Of A Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)


Runtime: 108 minutes


Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock


Starring: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge


From: Universal


Here is a movie I picked out as it was one of the ones I taped this past Sunday when it was on TCM. It turns out that out of all the movies he did, this one was Hitch's favorite. So it makes sense for me to talk about it eventually, and I decided to do it tonight.


The plot, which I took part of from the IMDb: “Charlotte 'Charlie' Newton is bored with her quiet life at home with her parents and her younger sister. She wishes something exciting would happen and knows exactly what they need: a visit from her sophisticated and much traveled uncle Charlie Oakley, her mother's younger brother. Imagine her delight when, out of the blue, they receive a telegram from Uncle Charlie announcing that he is coming to visit them for awhile. Charlie Oakley creates quite a stir and charms the ladies club as well as the bank president where his brother-in-law works. Young Charlie begins to notice some odd behavior on his part...” I wanted to end it there as I did not want to spoil anything concerning this mystery.


This is a tale where the first half you try to figure out what's wrong with Uncle Charlie (Cotten). At first, the teenaged girl known as Charlie (Wright; two characters having the same first name actually is never confusing) is happy to see her uncle as early on she has an existential crisis about her life and how it's so boring and plain. She was happy to see her uncle, until she ran into two detectives who were following him as they had their suspicions about him but it wasn't a solid case for them. Suddenly things change and I'll leave it at that.


While there are two young kid characters who can be annoying at times, otherwise I have little to carp about with this movie. There is a lot of suspense, thrilling moments, and great dialogue you hear. There are intense conversations between the two people known as Charlie; the performances by and large are at least good (and I was not used to seeing old man Hume Cronyn looking youthful in his film debut) and there is some dark humor in that Hume's character and the dad of the family are friends and they enjoy detective mysteries and they discuss what would be the best way to kill someone and get away with it. But it is Wright and Cotten who make the film with their great performances. That helped me enjoy this a lot; and there is quite the awesome ending that I thought was great in thought and execution.



To think that I wasn't really familiar with the film before they played it on TCM; now I am glad I saw it, for sure. He's had many great films but I say that this is one of them. I'll be back Sunday night.