SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writers: Sally Benson, Alma Reville, and Thornton Wilder (story by Gordon MacDonell) Starring: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Casey, Patricia Collinge, Henry Travers, Hume Cronyn, Wallace Frod, Edna Mae Wonacott, Charles Bates
Alfred Hitchcock was always more interested in human emotions and how he can play with them than he was in cheap suspense thrills. He once said that he enjoyed playing the audience like a piano, and he did this almost effortlessly in his films, giving us protagonists who we can all identify with, and then putting them in the most dangerous of situations. While he sometimes diverted from this trend, his films nevertheless show a man more fascinated with humanity than just general chills. It's what separates him from any other director of suspense: he knew the secret to scaring people was preying on real human emotions.
"Shadow of a Doubt" is not one of Hitchcock's best, but is still one of his most intriguing, mainly because it presents what could have been a typical chase movie, and instead opts for a complex and very human tale of the relationship between a serial killer and a close member of his family. "Shadow of a Doubt" concerns itself with Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten, friend of Orson Welles), who has been killing numerous women who gain a fortune from their dead husbands and then do nothing with their lives but spend it. When we first meet him, he's trying to elude the police, and decides at a moment's notice to head to his sister's home to lay low for a bit.
His arrival sparks the interest of his niece, also named Charlie (Teresa Wright), a young adult who has become somewhat bored with life and figures that her uncle, whom she is said to have a lot in common with, will bring some interest back into her life. This sets up an intriguing psychological tale that is constantly twisting: Uncle Charlie is constantly trying to paranoiacally hide his crimes from his family, and the truth about him is always on the verge of popping out. As we watch, we're afraid of many things: will Charlie find out about her uncle, and if so, what will her do to her? Will the police come and take him away, executing him, or will he get away with what he's done? The film is a suspense film, but only in that we're more worried about what will happen to the characters and less how it happens.
The film introduces a couple sub-plots, the most prominent being a pair of so-called reporters who come to do a socialogical survey on the family, conveniently when Uncle Charlie's in town, and soon turn out to be cops, following a lead (there are two people they think is the serial killer - Uncle Charlie's one of them). Charlie soon falls in love with one of them - Jack Graham (Macdonald Casey) - and she finds herself torn between her Uncle's possible secret identity and her newfound love.
Hitchcock builds the film up so well, piling on a surprising amount of depth and emotion for a suspense film, and in turn explores many of his favorite themes, such as man's ability to commit murder (her father and a friend of the family, played by a comparitively young Hume Cronyn, playfully discuss how they would murder eachother), knowledge of a loved one's crimes, and, most prominently, the duality of man, which elevates the film to a higher plain than most suspense films like this. Both of the Charlies in this film are built up to be like twins, but as the film goes on, and the truth comes out into the open, we see how different they are. They almost become like two battling parts of the human psyche, each fighting for dominant control. "Shadow of a Doubt" becomes almost more of a suspense film at times, and is rather an intelligent debate over the control of the id. What other suspense films have this kind of psychological depth.
It doesn't hurt that the film plays so well with our emotions. Uncle Charlie, played to an eerie kind of perfection by Joseph Cotten, is a sympathetic character, all because Charlie likes him so much. After awhile, we begin to see him as a loving uncle as well, and we can identify with her feelings when his shady past begin to catch up with him. And the film is wise in bringing in the other members of the family as well. The family is presented as a parallel to a lot of the things that go on, serving as a lot of comic releif, but later the film fully fleshes out the mother, who almost needs Uncle Charlie, and would probably be devastated for life if she learned of his past.
Unfortunately, a couple things crop up later on that bring the film down a bit. The last act takes a couple misteps, going for a more traditional suspense ending rather than really digging deep, and coming to a totally intelligent conclusion, which is what this film needs. The ending does work a bit though, but more in favor of the psychogical undertones, and less in favor of the dramatic undertones (back to that whole battle over the id thingy). And the romance between Charlie and Jack seems more of a requirement of a film for the time when it was made - they get together more out of necessity for the plot than anything else.
"Shadow of a Doubt" overcomes these, though, but not totally. What it needs is a much better ending, and a lot more development in the romance department, if it really needs a romance, that is. You still have to admire Hitchcock for not making this overtly cheap by giving into every single suspense tactic in the book. In fact, the film is very mild mannered in the action department, and it opts to work with the suspense of humanity rather than the suspense of just easy thrills. That's what makes Hitchcock better than everyone else, and that's why this film is so admirable.
MY RATING (out of 4): ***1/2
Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/
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