| Shadow of a Doubt | |
| Director: | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Producer: | Jack H. Skirball |
| Screenplay: | |
| Story: | Gordon McDonell |
| Starring: | |
| Music: | Dimitri Tiomkin Franz Lehár |
| Cinematography: | Joseph A. Valentine |
| Editing: | Milton Carruth |
| Studio: | Skirball Productions |
| Gross: | $1.2 million (U.S. rentals)[1] |
| Distributor: | Universal Pictures |
| Runtime: | 108 minutes[2] |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell.
Charlotte "Charlie" Newton and her parents live in very quiet Santa Rosa, California. An unexpected visit by Charles Oakley, her charming and sophisticated "Uncle Charlie", brings much excitement to her family and the small town. That excitement turns to fear as young Charlie slowly realizes her uncle is in fact a wanted serial murderer known as the "Merry Widow" killer. The fear escalates when Oakley realizes she knows his secret.
In 1991, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[3] [4] The film was also Alfred Hitchcock's favorite of all of his films.[5]
Charlotte "Charlie" Newton is a bored teenage girl living in the idyllic town of Santa Rosa, California. She receives wonderful news: Her mother's younger brother (her eponym), Charles Oakley, is arriving for a visit. Upon his arrival, everyone is delighted, especially young Charlie. As a gesture of affection, Uncle Charlie gives his niece an emerald ring. However, she notices that it has someone else's initials engraved inside.
Not long afterward, two men appear at the Newton home, trying to take Uncle Charlie's picture. Young Charlie guesses they are undercover police detectives. One of them explains her uncle is one of two suspects who may be the "Merry Widow Murderer". Charlie refuses to believe it at first, but learns that the initials engraved inside the ring he gave her match those of one of the murdered women. She then notices Uncle Charlie begin to act strangely.
During dinner one night, Uncle Charlie lets his guard down and reveals his hatred of rich widows. He describes them as "fat, wheezing animals". Horrified, young Charlie runs out of the room. Uncle Charlie follows and takes her into a seedy bar. He admits he is one of the two murder suspects. He begs her for help; she reluctantly agrees not to say anything, as long as he leaves soon to avoid a horrible confrontation that would destroy her mother, who idolizes her younger brother.
News breaks that an alternative suspect was chased by police and killed by an airplane propeller; it is assumed that he was the murderer. Uncle Charlie is delighted to be exonerated, but young Charlie knows all his secrets. Not long afterward, she falls down some dangerously steep stairs, which she later discovers were deliberately cut through.
After his supposed exoneration, Uncle Charlie indicates that he wants to settle down in Santa Rosa. Young Charlie says she will kill him if he stays. Later that night, Uncle Charlie lures her into the garage, starts the car engine, and jams the door so that the garage will fill with exhaust fumes. A friend happens to come by the house, hears Charlie banging on the garage door, and rescues her.
Uncle Charlie soon announces he is leaving for San Francisco – along with Mrs. Porter, a rich widow. At the train station, young Charlie boards the train, claiming to want to see Uncle Charlie's compartment. He plans to shove his niece out of the train after it picks up speed. A struggle between them ensues, and Uncle Charlie – the "Merry Widow Murderer" – loses, falling in front of an oncoming train.
At his funeral, Uncle Charlie is sentimentally honored by the townspeople. The detective returns, and Charlie confesses that she withheld crucial information. They resolve to keep Uncle Charlie's crimes a secret.
Alfred Hitchcock appears about 16 minutes into the film, on the train to Santa Rosa, playing bridge with Doctor and Mrs. Harry. Charlie is traveling on the train under the assumed name of Otis, and is lying down due to a migraine. Mrs. Harry is eager to help him, but her husband is not interested and keeps playing bridge. Doctor Harry replies to Hitchcock that he does not look well while Hitchcock is holding a full suit of spades, the best hand for bridge.[8]
The project began when the head of David Selznick's story department, Margaret McDonell, told Hitchcock that her husband Gordon had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie. His idea, called "Uncle Charlie", was based on the true story of Earle Nelson, a serial killer of the late 1920s known as "the Gorilla Man".
Shadow of a Doubt was both filmed and set in Santa Rosa, California, which was portrayed as a paragon of a supposedly peaceful, small, pre-War American city. Since Thornton Wilder wrote the original script, the story is set in a small American town, a popular setting of Wilder's, but with an added Hitchcock touch to it. In Patrick McGilligan's biography of Hitchcock, he said the film was perhaps the most American film that Hitchcock had made up to that time.
The opening scenes take place in the East Ward (aka the "Ironbound"/"Down Neck" section of Newark, New Jersey). The city skyline and landmarks such as the Pulaski Skyway are featured in the opening shot. The location shots were used to comply with the wartime War Production Board restrictions of a maximum cost of $5,000 for set construction.[9]
An Italianate-style house, built in 1872, was used for exterior shots of the Newton family home. As of 2024, it is still standing, located at 904 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa.
The stone railway station in the film was built in 1904 for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and is one of the few commercial buildings in central Santa Rosa to survive the earthquake of April 18, 1906. The station is currently a visitor center. The library was a Carnegie Library which was demolished in 1964 due to seismic concerns.[10] Some of the buildings in the center of Santa Rosa that are seen in the film were damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in 1969; much of the area was cleared of debris and largely rebuilt.
The film was scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, his first collaboration with Hitchcock (the others being Strangers on a Train, I Confess and Dial M for Murder). In his score, Tiomkin quotes the Merry Widow Waltz of Franz Lehár, often in somewhat distorted forms, as a leitmotif for Uncle Charlie and his serial murders. During the opening credits, the waltz theme is heard along with a prolonged shot of couples dancing.
Cinematographer Joseph A. Valentine described his work on the film: "Our Santa Rosa location was chosen because it seemed to be typical of the average American small city, and offered, as well, the physical facilities the script demanded. There was a public square, around which much of the city's life resolves. There was an indefinable blending of small town and city, and of old and new, which made the town a much more typical background of an average American town than anything that could have been deliberately designed. The Santa Rosans were very cooperative, and most of our problems in these scenes were the ordinary ones of rigging scrims and placing reflectors or booster lights where they were needed.
The most spectacular part of our work was naturally the making of the night exterior sequences. We had with us two generator sets, ten 150-ampere arc spotlights, and the usual assortment of incandescent lights...making a total of 3,000 ampere maximum electrical capacity. With this we lit up an expanse of four city blocks for our night-effect long shots!....Oddly enough, one of our less spectacular night scenes proved really the harder problem. This was a sequence played around the city's public library. This building is a lovely Gothic structure, almost completely clothed in ivy. I think all of us were surprised at the way those dark green ivy leaves drank up the light. Actually, on our long shots of that single building we used every unit of lighting equipment we had with us—and we could very conveniently have used more if we had had them!....Frequently people who have seen these night scenes of ours have jumped to the conclusion that with such an area to illuminate we must have filmed them by day with Infra-Red film rather than actually by night. If only they'd seen how we worked to finish our night scenes before the Pacific Coast's "dim-out" order [of WWII] went into effect, they'd change their minds. All of our night scenes were filmed actually at night—and we just got under the wire, finishing the last one scarcely a matter of hours before the dim-out became effective."[11]
Upon release, the film received unanimously positive reviews. Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, loved the film, stating that "Hitchcock could raise more goose pimples to the square inch of a customer's flesh than any other director in Hollywood".[12] Time Magazine called the film "superb",[12] while Variety stated that "Hitchcock deftly etches his small-town characters and homey surroundings".[12] The entertainment trade paper The Film Daily was yet another reviewer in 1943 that praised every aspect of the production. The publication predicted big “box office” for theaters presenting Hitchcock's latest work, although in its detailed review of Shadow of a Doubt the paper does mistakenly refer to the director's 1941 film Suspicion as "'Suspense'":
In a 1964 interview on Telescope with host Fletcher Markle, Markle noted, "Mr. Hitchcock, most critics have always considered Shadow of a Doubt, which you made in 1943, as your finest film." Hitchcock replied immediately, "Me too." Markle then asked, "That is your opinion of it still?" Hitchcock replied, "Oh, no question." At the time, Hitchcock's most recent work was Marnie. When later interviewed by François Truffaut, Hitchcock denied the suggestion that Shadow of a Doubt was his "favourite".[13] But in the audio interview with Truffaut, Hitchcock confirmed it was his favourite film, and later reiterated that Shadow of a Doubt was his favorite film in his interview with Mike Douglas in 1969 and in his interview with Dick Cavett in 1972. Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Pat Hitchcock also said that her father's favorite film was Shadow of a Doubt in Laurent Bouzereau’s 2000 documentary Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film.
Today, the film is still regarded as a major work of Hitchcock's. Contemporary critic Dave Kehr called it Hitchcock's "first indisputable masterpiece."[14] In 2005 film critic David Denby of The New Yorker called it Hitchcock's most "intimate and heart-wrenching" film.[15] Based on 48 reviews on the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has received a 100% approval rating, with a weighted average of 9.20/10. The site's consensus reads: "Alfred Hitchcock's earliest classic — and his own personal favorite — deals its flesh-crawling thrills as deftly as its finely shaded characters".[12] On Metacritic it has a score of 94 out of 100, based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[16] When asked by critics as to an overarching theme for the film Hitchcock responded: "Love and good order is no defense against evil". In his book Bambi vs. Godzilla, David Mamet calls it Hitchcock's finest film.[17] In his 2011 review of the film, film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his Great Movies list.[18] In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked the film at No. 41 on their list of "The 100 best thriller films of all time".[19]
The film was adapted for Cecil B. DeMille's Lux Radio Theater aired on January 3, 1944, with its original leading actress Teresa Wright and William Powell as Uncle Charlie (Patrick McGilligan said Hitchcock had originally wanted Powell to play Uncle Charlie, but MGM refused to lend the actor for the film). In 1950, Shadow of a Doubt was featured as a radio-play on Screen Directors Playhouse. It starred Cary Grant as Uncle Charlie and Betsy Drake as the young Charlie.[20] It was also adapted to the Ford Theater (February 18, 1949). The Screen Guild Theater adapted the film twice with Joseph Cotten, the first with Vanessa Brown as young Charlie, and the second with Deanna Durbin in the role. The Academy Award Theater production of Shadow of a Doubt was aired on September 11, 1946.[21]
The film has been remade twice: in 1958 as Step Down to Terror,[22] and again (under the original title) as a 1991 TV movie in which Mark Harmon portrayed Uncle Charlie.[23]
Shadow of a Doubt influenced the beginning of Park Chan-wook's 2013 film Stoker.[24]