Classics Chat: Shadow of a Doubt
Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten put the FUN in dysfunctional in Shadow of a Doubt.
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
What’s Shadow of a Doubt About?
Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) is sick of idyllic life in Santa Rosa. She sees the suburban life that her parents built as horrible. No one is willing to have meaningful talks, her mother seems to do nothing but cook and clean, and her father is content to spend is his day at the bank before coming home and pouring over ghoulish true crime murder cases with a neighbor friend.
Her suburban funk is ended when she gets a telegram. Her Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten), her namesake and favorite relative, is coming for a visit.
At first, everything is wonderful. Uncle Charlie shakes up the mundane rut the Newton family has fallen into, offering presents and grand stories of business on the East Coast. But something begins to bother Charlie about her Uncle. As she digs to find the truth, Charlie uncovers some dark secrets about her uncle.
As she grapples with what to do about her Uncle, Charlie regrets wishing away her boring little life.
What Is Shadow of a Doubt a Classic?
If you think this movie sounds familiar, but you remember it in color, you’re thinking of Park Chan-wook’s Stoker, which is an excellent movie with a script heavily influenced by Shadow of a Doubt. I highly recommend you watch both as a creepy uncle double feature, just don’t do it at the next family reunion.
Like so many movies that are now considered classics, Shadow of a Doubt was a bomb at the box office. Moviegoers just didn’t want to watch a movie about the underlying rot that festered beneath picturesque suburban towns.
The movie is meant to disturb and pick at the audience’s own sense of security.
Director Alfred Hitchcock set out to make a film that took a mundane subject — the suburbs — and twisted it into something terrifying. Shadow of a Doubt is a rousing success not because it manages to take the Norman Rockwell ideal of an American family life and turn it into something rotten and deeply creepy. There’s a reason Hitchcock frequently listed Shadow of a Doubt as his favorite film.
The movie not only emphasizes that the suburbs are unsafe, it shows the viewer exactly how easy it is to manipulate good people. The willful obliviousness of the neighbors, family, even crossing guards as they ignore all the signs that something might be wrong with Uncle Charlie in the name of keeping up appearances. They’re so willing to take flimsy explanations and never question them that they honor Charles, letting him give speeches and treating him as if he’s a visiting dignitary.
And that makes Charlie’s realizations about her uncle that much worse. Once she learns that her uncle is likely a serial murderer, she’s left with two problems: It’s likely no one will believe her, but if they do, the truth will destroy her family. Wright is brilliant in these moments of conflict, watching as her mother fauns and cries while clutching Uncle Charlie, looking both disgusted and horrified. Her mother won’t be able to recover if she finds out her brother is a monster, but if Charlie says nothing, more people will likely die.
Charlie’s wish for something exciting to happen is granted by her uncle, who drags her out of her clean cute little suburban bubble and into the real world. Charlie ends up in a seedy bar, held hostage there by her uncle and sees first hand what the world can do to people. Watching all of her ideals shatter is both heartbreaking and horrifying, and it plays out on Wright’s face beautifully.
As Uncle Charlie, Cotten offers one of his best screen performances. Superficially charming, it’s easy to see why people like Charles at first. But the moment he begins speaking about women his hands clench, his tone changes, and a real chill enters the room. His deep misogyny and increasingly erratic behavior are swept aside blithely by people who encounter him. You can see them pause, as if they recognize something odd about the man before them, then make the conscious decision to dismiss him. And that’s the real power that Charles holds over people, he seems to understand that polite society will go out of its way to ignore the bad if you offer them something they want to hear. If Uncle Charlie were around today he’d probably have a popular YouTube account and scores of defenders saying he was just misunderstood.
Hitchcock also has a lot to say about amateur sleuthing. Charlie’s father Joseph (Henry Travers) and neighbor Herbie (Hume Cronyn) are constantly in the background of every scene discussing true crime and conjecturing about how to commit the perfect murder. They’re obsessions lead them to pretend to poison each other and discuss ways to dispose of bodies, but they are completely oblivious to the real threats right in front of their faces. When Herbie stumbles upon Charlie after her uncle attempts to murder her, he immediately believes it’s an accident. It never occurs to either of them that anything nefarious could ever happen in their safe little enclave. It’s a scathing indictment of true crime lovers, who Hitchcock seems to deem as insensible ghouls, and one wonders what Alfred would make of the modern true crime podcast/TV industry.
The other thing that makes the movie so disturbing is likely the ending. Charlie manages to defeat her uncle, pushing him off a train after her tries to kill her again. But there’s no triumph. Charlie has to lie, to save her mother’s mental state and her community’s quiet sense of security. She must watch as her uncle is hailed as the greatest man who ever came to Santa Rosa, and smile wanly at the hordes of people at his funeral. Even her love interest is unsatisfying, as she seems to cling to him because he’s the only person who will ever know the truth. Poor Charlie will have to choke on all of her trauma and pain in the name of politeness.
This is what the suburbs are to Hitchcock: The illusion of control. If you don’t feel in control of your world, lie and grapple with minutia until your sense of control returns. Anyone who’s ever dealt with an HOA can tell you that Hitchcock had the right idea about suburban living.
Anything Cringe?
Weirdly, for a film made in 1943, there’s very few cringe elements. One could argue that there’s a period-appropriate gender roles that are old fashioned, but as Hitchcock makes the villain a raging misogynist and the hero a teen girl who refuses to accept the status quo, it’s hard to knock it even for that.
Verdict
One of Hitchcock’s best efforts, Shadow of a Doubt is criminally underseen. If you're a fan of classic movies, and horror films that cultivate dread, this movie is unbeatable.
Shadow of a Doubt is rated PG and is available to stream on Peacock.
