A young woman discovers that her visiting “Uncle Charlie” is not who he appears to be.
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The example of Alfred Hitchcock serves as a vivid confirmation of the fact that all problems come from childhood. Two seemingly innocent parental blunders forever changed the boy’s worldview, making him afraid of cops for the rest of his life, and making the leitmotif of the wrongly accused the central theme of his works. However, every cloud has a silver lining, for the subconscious fear allowed the director to learn to awaken in the audience a growing sense of suspense, in other words, to evoke the suspense that eventually became synonymous with the director’s surname.
However, just as any successful professional boxer was once a novice amateur, and a brilliant director before receiving the status of “legends of cinema” has come a long way to the professional. Alfred himself, when asked which version of the film “The Man Who Knew Too Much” -1934 or 1956 – is better, he said that the first version was filmed talented amateur, while the second – a professional. One of the films released during this formative period was “Shadow of a Doubt”, which clearly shows the imprint of a creator, but still very young and not experienced enough.
Joseph Cotten, wearing a crumpled hat, plays the role of the mysterious Uncle Charlie, deftly evading the suspicious personalities searching for him. With the goal of laying low, he moves to the other end of the states of almighty America, to the suburbs to his sister and her family. Theresa Wright, with her lovely hair – her niece and namesake – is overjoyed by her uncle’s arrival, but not for long. The latter’s strange behavior leads young Charlie to question the true purpose of his arrival. Who are these people, and why is her uncle so desperate to escape from them? And why did he become so nervous when he hummed a tune from the operetta The Merry Widow?
The detective theme, typical of those years, acquires a frighteningly plausible form through its attention to detail, which can easily be overlooked, as does the director’s cameo on the train. The maestro himself claimed that suspense loves order, implying that the situations in which the heroes find themselves must be as close to reality as possible.
And already the opening scene, due to the competent combination of musical and visual accompaniment, allows subtly convey the contrast between hostile New Jersey and a small suburb in California, instilling in the viewer a false sense of comfort and coziness. False, for soon, from a pleasant “pre-war” (for the U.S. was by then fully absorbed in the battles with the descendants of the Samurai) settlement, the town turns into a snare and a means of manipulation, in which news spreads faster than the smoke coming from a lit cigarette.
The main irritant that contributed to this metamorphosis was Joseph Cotten, whose portrayal of Uncle Charlie, coupled with Hitchcock’s visionary sensibility, turned out to be far more versatile than his name. The action figure, based on the personality of serial killer Earl Leonard Nelson, is quite unlike a “cardboard” schemer. Cotten is a piece of noir in a peaceful town. Like a lily, overshadowed by its peculiar appearance and smell of a bouquet of roses, it attracts the attention of all residents, unobtrusively submitting them to its will. The result of the painstaking work on the character makes you wonder what comes first: the idea of the film or Charlie’s appearance. The lively dialogues and plot twists that contradict the “guns on the wall” principle add credibility to the proceedings.
But what the movie is unlucky with is the finale, which is actually a complete lack of logic, which looks like a white crow painted with fluorescent paint against the background of the above. Only if the crow glowing in the dark attracts attention, the finale in Shadow of a Doubt, on the contrary, rejects it. The reason for this is the premature departure of screenwriter Thornton Wilder, who was drafted to the front and had to finish the script on his way to the service, which, apparently, he did not like very much. Otherwise, to explain the reason for such a striking discrepancy between the enormous attention to the plot development and frankly faded ending is simply not possible.
If you close your eyes to the intrigue behind the scenes, you get the impression that Hitchcock approached the making of the film with the tenacity of a schoolboy who, on his way to work, was told by his parents to clean his apartment thoroughly. And so, having begun to thoroughly clean every corner of the room, in an hour he finally got bored with this action, and, abandoning everything, jumped out into the street to walk with friends in the hope that his mother would not scold him too much. “Shadow of a Doubt” can be scolded for being flawed and can safely be called not the best work of the “King of Suspense.” But to call it an unsightly expression “on the way to being a professional” does not turn my tongue, and my fingers are not curved. And the reason for that is Joseph Cotten, for whom this role, on par with “Citizen Kane,” remains the best in the American actor’s career. Don’t believe it? Then watch it and see for yourself.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (69.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English: DTS 2.0
French: DTS 2.0 Mono
German: DTS 2.0
Italian: DTS 2.0
Japanese: DTS 2.0
Subtitles
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish.
