by A.J.
Night 5: Hitchcock Night/Suburban Horror Night II
“Do you know if you ripped the front off houses you’d find swine? The world is a hell.”
Master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock directed so many truly great movies that even several of his less famous movies are among his greatest and the greatest of any era. Shadow of a Doubt is not as famous as Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, or North by Northwest, but it is secretly one of his greatest movies. At first it may seem like a slight or minor movie given its small scale and quaint setting, however these aspects belie its dark and unsettling plot. It is also the epitome of Hitchcock’s ultimate career long theme: danger is always lurking and will come at the most unexpected time in the most unexpected form to someone who feels completely safe. The stars, Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright, are two of my favorite classic era performers. This movie is where I first saw them. The setting is Santa Rosa, California, a town so average it could be Anytown, USA. It is so idyllic and cozy that things like crime and murder and even war don’t seem possible there, even though the year is 1943. There is no trace of darkness in the home of Young Charlie, that is until Uncle Charlie arrives. Teenage Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) is discontent with the mundanity of suburban comfort and longs for something to rejuvenate her family. The change comes with the arrival of lively and charming Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), who does indeed recharge the household dynamic. He also brings darkness that Young Charlie could not have imagined. Though mother Emma (Patricia Collinge)–Hitchcock’s last sympathetic portrayal of a mother–delights in having her brother with her, the real connection is between the two Charlies. The very morning she planned on sending him a telegram to come visit, the family receives a telegram that Uncle Charlie is on his way. No one has any suspicions that he is possibly The Merry Widow Murderer. There are a lot of things I like about Shadow of a Doubt, but what makes it special are the performances of Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. They are excellent choices to play average Americans while still being distinct. Joseph Cotton rarely played a villain but he does a fantastic job playing a complex character that is as sinister as he is charming. He never does anything forthrightly villainous, at least not for most of the movie, but he behaves just suspicious enough for Young Charlie to have doubts about him. In Cotton’s best scene Uncle Charlie’s jovial mask begins to slip and delivers a speech brimming with contempt and disgust about rich windows: “[Husbands] die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives, .... these useless women...drinking the money, losing the money… faded, fat, greedy women.”
As Young Charlie, Teresa Wright is fresh-faced and lively, at first. She is perhaps naïve but she is not dull or dim. Once her suspicions are raised, she does detective work of her own and puts the pieces and clues together. The scene where she finds the newspaper story about the Merry Widow Murderer that Uncle Charlie hid from the family is an effective one. Hitchcock wanted the camera instead of Wright to gasp so it pulls back from a close-up to a wide overhead shot. My favorite moment comes when Young Charlie finally makes her appearance at a dinner party as Uncle Charlie is about to give a toast. She descends the stairs wearing the ring he gave her, a ring she now realizes is evidence. The camera pushes in from a wide shot of Charlie to a close up of the ring. Neither she nor Uncle Charlie say anything about the ring, but the tone of the entire scene changes for her and him and the audience though it remains the same for the other characters. That things are not what they seem and pleasant appearances and behavior belie a hidden menace were frequent themes of Hitchcock’s movies. Just about every Hitchcock movie dealt with the dark side of human nature and society to some degree. This is especially pronounced in Shadow of a Doubt. Perhaps the darkest sequence is when Uncle Charlie takes his niece to a seedy bar to confront her about her suspicions. Smoke fills the bar and their waitress is a former classmate of Young Charlie’s who wears a bitter, dour expression, looks at her and says, “I never thought I’d see you here.” When he realizes that he cannot charm her any longer, Uncle Charlie tells her how little she knows about the world. His words are harsh and cynical but they sting because there is truth in them. This scene is similar to the sequence in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet where young and naïve Jeffery (Kyle MacLachlan) goes to Lincoln Avenue, the bad and dangerous part of his small, quaint town, and sees and learns harsh realities. I do not know for sure how much Shadow of a Doubt influenced Blue Velvet but the two films share similar themes and would make a great double feature. (Shadow of a Doubt certainly had a more direct influence on the film Stoker, a previous Shocktober recommendation, which is also about a newly arrived sinister Uncle Charlie who casts a spell over his niece). The ending might feel anticlimactic but it turns out to be a subversive conclusion fitting for this surprisingly dark and challenging classic.
Shadow of a Doubt airs on TCM on Sunday, October 26th at 9PM CT and might be at your local library.
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