I've seen "Shadow of a Doubt" 3 or 4 times but every time you're forced to take the trip with the same amount of commitment. Brilliant, because in Joseph Cotten's eyes we find his need for redemption or are we falling in the trap of this master manipulator? We are torn, just like Teresa Wright. Teresa Wright's eyes tell the whole story from the audience's point of view, even if the audience is one step ahead of her. The scenes between Henry Travers and Hume Cronyn are how I imagine the story meetings between Thornton Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. Patricia Collinge's performance is so spot on that you're longing for more. The structure is Our Townish, the characters, deliciously rich. Thornton Wilder was Hitchcock's partner in crime this time and it shows. Uncle Charlie's urbanity becomes his most frightening feature. Joseph Cotten is the perfect charming monster. I mistrusted the uncle thing as a term of endearment ever since. Young thriller heroines from then on owe Wright’s Charlie a tip of the hat.Uncle Charlie did it for me. Still, she’s a plucky, all-American girl, and she rises to the occasion, but not without having to hold on to a terrible secret for the rest of her life. Hitchcock puts Wright through the wringer she goes from happy-go-lucky to guilty accomplice (not wanting to ruin her family’s reputation or break her mother’s heart by revealing the truth about Mother’s brother) to fearing for her life. Certainly Jack Graham, the young detective who woos Charlie, is no help.) (What goes unmentioned in this film, made during the height of World War II, is that there are hardly any young men around to play hero, so the responsibility falls to a young woman. Except that Charlie is actually the “Merry Widow” serial killer, and only his namesake niece recognizes the truth about her favorite uncle. Alfred Hitchcock’s movie starts out as a slice of picture-perfect Americana, with a nice, middle-class, Main Street family celebrating a reunion with beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). Think of what a poison pill Shadow of a Doubt must have seemed in 1943. Cast: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten Get This MovieĬharlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright)
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