Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, from 1943, was the personal favorite film of the master of suspense—and the one he most enjoyed making.
Charles “Uncle Charlie” Oakley, a suave career criminal (played by Joseph Cotten), is on the run from the police in Newark, New Jersey. Cornered, he wires to his sister’s family in the quiet town of Santa Rosa, California, and announces that he will be paying them a visit.
His niece, nicknamed Charlie after him, adores him and is delighted when his arrival perks up the family’s sleepy life. But she soon begins to suspect that Uncle Charlie—about whom the family knows very little—may be more than the sophisticated charmer he appears to be.
Two detectives have trailed Uncle Charlie to Santa Rosa and, under the guise of pollsters, start to investigate him. Young Charlie is at first suspicious of them and guesses their true motive.
One of the detectives, Jack Graham, takes Young Charlie aside and tells her why he is really in town. Young Charlie, horrified, refuses to hear his disclosures about her beloved uncle.
But Young Charlie is too smart to overlook clues, and the dreadful truth finally dawns on her—to her grave danger. She is terrified to find that she is the only living person to know the truth about her charming uncle.
Young Charlie is played by Teresa Wright, who won the Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role in Mrs. Miniver in 1942. She is also celebrated for her roles in such memorable films as The Little Foxes and The Best Years of Our Lives.
Shadow of a Doubt is, perhaps, unique among Hitchcock’s works in that it achieves its chilling effects in an extremely understated manner, without horror or bloodshed.
Written by a team including Thornton Wilder, author of the classic play Our Town, Shadow of a Doubt is a superb blend of the folksy spirit of small-town America in the 1940s with the suspense and sense of underlying evil for which Hitchcock has always been acclaimed.
