roboticman What if the person who you looked up to, the person who you loved most, the person who you trusted and could go to when you're in trouble...What if that person wasn't who they seemed to be? That is what Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 suspense thriller Shadow of a Doubt does so beautifully.In the quiet innocent town of Santa Rosa, California, terror is about to enter in the form of a man named Charlie. He is visiting his sister for a while. She has a daughter that is named after Charlie. Young Charlie looks up to Uncle Charlie as a father figure, someone she loves and who loves her too. But she soon realizes that Uncle Charlie might be on the run from some cops.Hitchcock is widely regarded as the master of suspense which he rightly deserves. There definitely is suspense in this movie but he doesn't use it as much like in Rope or Strangers on a Train where the suspense is built around the movie, this movie focuses on the fear of a person who you know is guilty of a crime but you keep refusing that it's true.Joseph Cotten, who is more well known for Orson Welles' movies like Citizen Kane or The Third Man, masterfully plays Uncle Charlie. It's very similar to the performance of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs: he's a person who comes around as a complete gentleman, but as you get to know him, he could lash out at you to complete his goal, no matter what. Just the way he talks or how clenches his fists together as he's talking to you is only something Hitchcock can do perfectly.The town is also a perfect setting too. This takes place and was filmed in Santa Rosa, California, my home town. It's kind of cool that one of the most acclaimed directors of all time filmed one of his best movies in a place where I've lived my whole life. Santa Rosa is also the perfect town too, the perfect town where everyone is happy and the landscape is beautiful, unknown of the terror that'll take place.The other actors are also pretty good, but the guy that puts the most effort is Joseph Cotten.Alfred Hitchcock put a lot of effort into the movie and it shows. This is a movie that is the definitive Hitchcock movie. And it just so happened to be, his personal favorite.

christopher-underwood With the rousing score of Dimitri Tiomkin and the wonderful camera work, this captivates from the very beginning. We switch from the tight, small lodging out into wide open and view a chase on foot from above, runners and shadows racing before us as we wonder just what is afoot. As it happens we are to find out that Joseph Cotton's character is guilty almost straight away yet spend the rest of the film in suspense as we doubt ourselves. This partly because of the tale of his personal history and partly because of the love and affection of his niece, a wonderful performance from Teresa Wright. Shot largely on location and using a lovely old property in which the large family tumble this way and that in marvellous abandon while the lady of the house tries to maintain control. I learn from the extras that in the end, more shots were required by Hitch and so a set had to be built anyway replicating the building. A very fine, involving, moving and suspenseful film.

Hitchcoc Joseph Cotten gets to play one of the most evil men in cinema history. Uncle Charlie, the perfect uncle, comes to live with his extended family and soon ingratiated himself. He is helpful and loving and psychotic. After he arrives, bad things start to happen to young women. Still, his charming being gets him under the radar. There are two incredible visuals. On has to do with a pair of women's glasses. One is the final scene which is frequently pointed to in retrospectives of the cinema. Hitchcock allows the characters to begin to sift through events and pull out the possibilities. He builds suspense in small increments and works us over with his delicate touch.

rochesternypizzaguy This movie held my interest, but by the end I saw so many plot holes and implausibilities that it diminished my enjoyment of it. I won't include any spoilers, although some of this won't make complete sense unless you've seen the movie. Joseph Cotten's character, "Uncle Charlie," goes to spend time with his sister's family, apparently to get away from a couple of guys who are trying to hunt him down (why, is not immediately apparent). The drama begins when Charlie tries to get rid of a newspaper page containing a story about him. Problem is, only he knew it was about him. Nobody else would have connected it with him, and he must have known that. Two central characters then concoct an elaborate scheme, involving posing as reporters, to get a photograph of his face, when they could have just set up across the street with a telephoto lens (which I'm pretty sure they had circa 1940). For that matter, they could've simply walked up to him as soon as he came out the front door. There was no reason for the magazine scheme, except as a plot device, that leads to one of the main characters implausibly falling head over heels in love, with further complications ensuing. Eventually we learn that the plot involves some murders. At the end, everybody seems happy to leave things as they are, because the murderer is dead, but it would not have been that simple. There would have been issues to resolve about what was stolen from the victims. No honest police officer would just walk away and leave things as they stood, knowing about those outstanding issues. Well directed, with some nice camera work, and generally well acted. The kids are a little stiff, unsurprisingly, though Henry Travers is excellent in his supporting role as Joseph Newton. But the plot lets this movie down.