Shadow of A Doubt: The Curious Case of the Two Charlies
If you have never seen the 1943 Hitchcock classic, Shadow of a Doubt, starring Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright, then quite honestly, you have not lived. This film is one of my top three Hitchcock favorites. Many things make this film unique, but one is that it is a film noir/melodrama with a reluctant femme fatale.
1943 Trailer for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shaow of a Doubt © Universal Pictures
A quick plot summary: Young Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) is bored with her life. While an adult, she is lost, hovering between girlhood and womanhood. She doesn’t have a job and wants something exciting to happen in her life. Enter Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten), who has a deep connection with Young Charlie, and it doesn’t seem like it is just because they share a name. Uncle Charlie has come to Santa Rosa, CA for a surprise visit with the family. Everyone is delighted until two policemen show up and inform Young Charlie that her beloved Uncle might be The Merry Widow killer. Young Charlie teams up with Detective Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey) to investigate. The problem is, the more she investigates, the more guilty her Uncle Charlie looks.
We start out sharing the point of view with both Uncle Charlie and Young Charlie, but as the film progresses, we most certainly are given Young Charlie’s POV to keep us guessing about her Uncle. Is he an evil killer? Or, does he just have bad luck with women? She wants to believe the best, but as the narrative unfolds, Young Charlie’s world is plunged from a life of benign family melodrama into a world of betrayal, deceit, and murder. It seems unfathomable that she had such a quiet life before Uncle Charlie arrived.
Hitchcock was a storyboard artist before he was a director in the silent film era. He would draw out all the scenes to be shot beforehand. Once he became a director, he never stopped drawing. Before he ever shot a roll of film, he had drawn out the entire film on storyboards. He knew exactly how every shot should look before the camera rolled. He also worked on German Expressionist films in the silent era, which most certainly influenced his shots and lighting decisions. When you watch Shadow of a Doubt, make sure to look out for noir lighting (also called chiaroscuro lighting) that emphasizes shadows and darkness, as well as strange angles that reflect an unbalanced mental state. It adds to the overall effect of the film and Young Charlie’s as well as Uncle Charlie’s state of mind. The lighting and angles link Young Charlie and Uncle Charlie, but so do the objects and dialogue. Be on the lookout. At the end of the film, you just might have enough to discuss at a dinner party or to impress a date. It is easy to do that with Hitchcock films.
Young Charlie is essentially a young, female investigator, something you do not often find in Hollywood films in this particular era. This is the time of film noir, where femmes fatales are the norm and they are destroying people, not saving them. Even though Young Charlie is the light to Uncle Charlie’s darkness, she is in no way innocent since she has to deceive both Uncle Charlie and her family to find out the truth. She is a complicated character that makes the film far more interesting to watch than if she were all good.
Thornton Wilder (Our Town) wrote the screenplay based on an idea from Gordon McDonell, who was married to Margaret McDonell, the head of David O. Selznick’s story department. In addition to Wilder, Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife, shares writing credit. Reville worked on the majority of Hitchcock’s films, either writing or sharing credit with other writers. Sally Benson, also credited on the screenplay, was a short story writer who also worked in the film and television industry.
While this film has been remade, I would suggest watching the original first. Alfred Hitchcock has said that Shadow of a Doubt was one of his favorite films.
Shadow of a Doubt was selected for preservation with the National Film Registry in 1991.