“Shadow of a Doubt” is a psychological thriller movie about a man from Newark, New Jersey, visiting relatives in Santa Rosa, California, where his niece slowly becomes suspicious that he is a serial killer on the run from the law. Director Alfred Hitchcock applied all of his signature characteristics to this film, the main one being suspense. The superb screenplay was penned by Thorton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville (Mrs. Hitchcock), with the story by Gordon McDonnell nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story.
The brilliantly cast film includes Teresa Wright as the niece, Joseph Cotton as the sophisticated yet suspect uncle, Henry Travers and Patricia Coolidge as Wright’s parents, Macdonald Carey and Wallace Ford as the detectives, Hume Cronyn as the neighbor and crime fiction buff, Edna Mae Wonacott and Charles Bates as Wright’s younger siblings, Irving Bacon as the station master, Clarence Muse as the pullman, Janet Shaw and Estelle Jewell as family friends, and Alfred Hitchcock in his usual cameo, this time as a man playing cards on the train, with a full hand of spades!
The film had excellent cinematography, per usual on Hitch’s projects, this one handled by Joseph A. Valentine. The original musical score was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin and Franz Lehar. The very watchable “Shadow of a Doubt” was successful in theatrical release for producer Jack H. Skirball and Universal Pictures. As recounted by his daughter Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, this was Hitchcock’s favorite motion picture of all his projects, at least partly because “it brought malice into a small town.”
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
cinema
My Review
“Shadow of a Doubt” is a psychological thriller movie about a man from Newark, New Jersey, visiting relatives in Santa Rosa, California, where his niece slowly becomes suspicious that he is a serial killer on the run from the law. Director Alfred Hitchcock applied all of his signature characteristics to this film, the main one being suspense. The superb screenplay was penned by Thorton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville (Mrs. Hitchcock), with the story by Gordon McDonnell nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story.
The brilliantly cast film includes Teresa Wright as the niece, Joseph Cotton as the sophisticated yet suspect uncle, Henry Travers and Patricia Coolidge as Wright’s parents, Macdonald Carey and Wallace Ford as the detectives, Hume Cronyn as the neighbor and crime fiction buff, Edna Mae Wonacott and Charles Bates as Wright’s younger siblings, Irving Bacon as the station master, Clarence Muse as the pullman, Janet Shaw and Estelle Jewell as family friends, and Alfred Hitchcock in his usual cameo, this time as a man playing cards on the train, with a full hand of spades!
The film had excellent cinematography, per usual on Hitch’s projects, this one handled by Joseph A. Valentine. The original musical score was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin and Franz Lehar. The very watchable “Shadow of a Doubt” was successful in theatrical release for producer Jack H. Skirball and Universal Pictures. As recounted by his daughter Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, this was Hitchcock’s favorite motion picture of all his projects, at least partly because “it brought malice into a small town.”