Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Wallace Ford, Patricia Collange, Edna May Wonacott, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bates, Janet Shaw. [PG]

Hitchcock’s favorite of his own films is an ominous but beguiling thriller that unearths an insidious breed of darkness that has come to Norman Rockwell’s small-town America. Young Wright, a picture of sweet sincerity, practically idolizes her uncle Charlie (Cotten), and is naturally excited when he comes home for an extended visit, completely unaware that police suspect him of being the “Merry Widow Murderer.” Though lacking in the visceral excitement that’s so synonymous with Hitch’s best-known films, it’s still a treasure trove of symbolic camera angles, visual counterpoints, slow builds of dread and malevolence, cynical humor, and flamboyant exposures of unstable psyches. Some plot points are nearly impossible to believe, but several sequences are knockouts (the uncle’s dinner table monologue, the fateful confrontation aboard an embarking train, etc.), and the deft work from the leads rank among the best of their respective careers—the usually soft-spoken, oaken Cotten is especially impressive: a chilling mix of charm and volatility that can waver with understated ease. Remade twice, once for theaters as Step Down to Terror, and once for television in 1991. Cronyn’s film debut.

90/100