Shadow of a Doubt (United States, 1943)

Shadow of a Doubt is a Hitchcock film that doesn’t necessarily feel like a Hitchcock film. That doesn’t mean it’s not a bona fide classic but many of the tropes that would come to be identified with the Master of Suspense are conspicuously absent from Shadow of a Doubt. Rather than being an edge-of-the-seat exercise in tension, this is a more sedate examination of how evil can lie hidden in the guise of something affable and benevolent, resulting in a gradual escalation of suspense.

When we first meet Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), he’s living in Newark, New Jersey (Hitchcock uses an establishing shot of the Pulaski Skyway) but his time on the East Coast is about to come to an abrupt end. Two detectives have tracked him down to the boarding house where he’s currently living and, because he has secrets he doesn’t want revealed, he telegraphs his sister, Emma Newton (Patricia Collinge), to let her know he will be coming to visit her at her home in Santa Rosa. Emma is delighted as is her teenage daughter, Charlotte a.k.a. “Young Charlie” (Teresa Wright), who idolizes Uncle Charlie.

Uncle Charlie is greeted with fanfare and appreciation by the Newtons and the community as a whole. He comes bearing gifts: a fur wrap for Emma, a watch for his brother-in-law, Joseph (Henry Travers, best remembered as Clarence the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life), and an emerald ring for Charlie. Gradually, however, Uncle Charlie’s true personality begins to emerge and Young Charlie becomes suspicious of him. Her adulation starts to curdle, especially when the two detectives, Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey) and Fred Saunders (Wallace Ford), seek her out with a shocking allegation – Uncle Charlie is one of two prime suspects as “The Merry Widow Murderer.” Following an uncomfortable dinner with her uncle, during which he lets loose with an unhinged rant, Charlie comes to believe the detectives – an act that puts her life in danger as Uncle Charlie decides she knows too much.

When asked in interviews over the course of his life about his favorite title among the films he made, he frequently cited Shadow of a Doubt. The movie, about a menace coming to a Norman Rockwell-esque small-town, held an appeal for Hitchcock (a similar attraction to the one that informed many of David Lynch’s projects). In order to effectively establish the setting, he hired famed playwright Thornton Wilder (“Our Town”) to write the initial screenplay treatment. Although Wilder left the project partway through to join the war effort, his influence is evident throughout Shadow of a Doubt, but most particularly during the early scenes in Santa Rosa. The inspiration for the story was the 16-month killing spree of Earle Nelson during the late 1920s.

Shadow of a Doubt is the ultimate “refrigerator movie”*, with a story so implausible that it only holds together because of the director’s remarkable ability at composition and the top-notch work of actors Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright. The narrative is riddled with holes; the more one thinks about the twists and turns of the screenplay, the more apparent it becomes that few of the details outside the central conceit work. Take the detectives, for example. After somehow following Uncle Charlie from Newark to Santa Rosa (without even knowing what he looks like), they plan to take a picture of him through methods that are painfully contrived. Then one of them falls in love with Young Charlie and wants to marry her.

The film’s central relationship – the one between the two Charlies – goes through three phases. In the first, Young Charlie is hopeless infatuated with her uncle, who seemingly reciprocates her feelings. The incestuous overtones are impossible to miss but Uncle Charlie is a predator of a different sort. Gradually, Young Charlie begins to have doubts. These germinate from an incident in which he attempts to hide a newspaper and are fertilized by the detectives. Once she is convinced her uncle is a sociopath and mass murderer, she becomes both an adversary and an accomplice. Her goal at this point isn’t to expose Uncle Charlie but to get him out of her life (and that of her family’s). If the price is her silence (and even helping him), she’s will to pay it.

Both leads, Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, had long and productive careers. At the time when Hitchcock cast them, Wright was something of a fresh face but she was riding a wave of popularity after having been Oscar-nominated for her first three movies (The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and Pride of the Yankees. She won for Mrs. Miniver.) Despite those accolades, one can make a compelling case that the best work she ever did was in Shadow of a Doubt. Cotten was more of a veteran than his co-star but his career was also on the rise. Often associated with Orson Welles, his biggest breaks came in Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. His work here is often cited as a career-best and it’s not hard to see why. The way he transforms from a seemingly likeable good guy into a monster is spine-chilling.

Cotten’s signature monologue, a rant delivered to Young Charlie in a restaurant where he first loses control, is an example of the actor going to the edge without tumbling into campiness. “The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who’ve spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. Then they die and leave their money to their wives. Their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money. Proud of their jewelry but of nothing else. Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.” The litany of bile and misogyny completes Young Charlie’s change in perception of her uncle. She knows what he is. And he knows she knows. What will she do about it? What will he do about it? Therein lies the root of the suspense.

When one thinks about film noir, images of dark alleys and long shadows come to mind. Hitchcock flips the pattern by setting Shadow of a Doubt in broad daylight in the heart of a town where people don’t lock their doors and a friendly neighbor (played by Hume Cronyn in his debut) can wander in and chat about detective novels and murder mysteries. But the shadows are there and they eventually come out, heralded by the billowing cloud of black smoke high above the train that brings Uncle Charlie to Santa Rosa and being seen frequently when he’s around.

Despite being the director’s personal favorite, Shadow of a Doubt isn’t among Hitchcock’s most accomplished films. It’s beautifully crafted but the screenplay is creaky and full of holes, some of which are evident even during a first watching. Nevertheless, the suspense is there and Cotten and Wright play off one another wonderfully. For those who enjoy ‘40s movies, this is one to see.

*: Hitchcock coined the term “refrigerator movie” to refer to a film that works in the moment but may fall apart on closer, later inspection. For example, after going home, when opening the refrigerator to get a snack, it hits you: “Wait a minute! That doesn’t make any sense!”

Shadow of a Doubt (United States, 1943)