Both feature amateur detectives and a leading character who wants to 'know' about the reality below everyday normality, a desire which leads to traumatic disillusion. Both are about 'normal' American towns living in seeming complacent denial, while dark and malevolent forces seeth below the surface. Circumstancial evidence mounts that Big Charlie might be the notorious fugitive 'Merry Widow' murderer, but even though her father (Henry Travers) and family friend Herbie (Hume Cronyn) are amateur detectives, only Young Charlie is sensitive to the signs that the family's most treasured member may be a serial killer.Įveryone who thinks Blue Velvet is a great film should give Shadow of a Doubt a serious looking-over. Big Charlie does have his strange moods, and is taken to spouting disturbing opinions about the uselessness of rich widows in this 'sty' of a world. Beloved by all, especially Young Charlie's sentimental mother Emma (Patricia Collinge), Charlie's stay is a big success until a pair of reporters (MacDonald Carey and Wallace Ford) doing a piece on 'normal American living' start snooping around the Newton family. She gets exactly that with the arrival of her namesake uncle, Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), a handsome and dashing travelling man of mystery who seems to have left New Jersey to elude pursuing detectives. Stuck in the quiet town of Santa Rosa, the spirited Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) alternates between grateful appreciation for her family and a desire for more excitement, perhaps even more danger, in her life. And Teresa Wright's radiant and textured performance is possibly the best by an actress in Hitch's entire filmography. Here takes pains to embrace his story rather than decorate it with Hitchcock 'touches.' In Saboteur, he didn't seem to have a handle on America, but the moods and millieu of this picture capture to perfection the world of small-town USA at a certain point in history.

Gimmickmeister, or a technically driven director more concerned with his camera and hisĬinematic effects than with the dramatic content of his films, the Master of Suspense Shadow of a Doubt is Hitchcock's first 'mature' film. Writing credits Gordon McDonell, Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville Starring Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, Wallace FordĪrt Direction Robert F.

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