new york times movie review+shadow of a doubt

Shadow of a Doubt’s Uncle Charlie is an incredibly interesting, multi-faceted villain and young Charlie is a realistic, beguiling mix of strong heroine and silly teenager. However, Uncle Charlie is an evil man, a murderer, and young Charlie finds herself and her family in peril.

In fact, it’s suggested that they have a psychic link. The audience quickly learns that both uncle and niece are linked by more than name. Shadow of a Doubt revolves around the relationship between a young woman and the uncle she was named after as he visits her and her family following a long absence. Though other Hitchcock films involve women that happen to be in peril, Shadow of a Doubt is one of his only films where the concept of feminine vulnerability is the nucleus of the film. This was particularly true during the genre’s genesis in the 1940s. The woman-in-peril genre was borne of and is sustained by the archaic idea that women are more vulnerable than men and thus experiencing their peril is a more exhilarating cinematic experience than watching a man fight off psychotic or supernatural forces. At its core, Shadow of a Doubt is a woman-in-peril film, a genre that has since proven problematic for a multitude of reasons. While all of those other films individually inspired numerous classics, Shadow of a Doubt’s legacy is less illustrious. The reason that Shadow of a Doubt hasn’t received the same amount of attention as Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window, or even Strangers on a Train and Rebecca has more to do with the films that it inspired rather than Shadow of a Doubt itself. This is particularly odd because Shadow of a Doubt’s influence exceeds its quality revered film critic Richard Schickel even speculated in Keepers, his 2015 book of criticism, that it could have been the first true example of film noir. Hitchcock’s 1943 thriller starring Joseph Cotten as the villainous Uncle Charlie and Teresa Wright as the heroine, young Charlie, flies relatively under the radar for a Hitchcock classic, particularly one that is so universally beloved. This week marks what would have been Alfred Hitchcock’s 117th birthday and as such it only makes sense to revisit what he considered the best of his own films: Shadow of a Doubt.

New york times movie review+shadow of a doubt