Old Movie Watching with Rob's video: Shadow of a Doubt - Movie Review

'Shadow of a Doubt' is one of Hitchcock's finest films. It's beautifully crafted with excellent acting and a thrilling story. I love the premise of the film: Joseph Cotton plays this character Charlie Oakley, who is a calm, well-dressed guy, and also on the run from pursuers. We don't really know why initially. That mystery will develop as we go. He decides to head to the sleepy town of Santa Rosa and hide out with his sister Emma Newton, played by Patricia Collinge, who only thinks the world of her brother. as does Charlotte "Charlie" Newton, her daughter, who is a warm, innocent and sweet character who thinks her uncle is wonderful and without fault. And for awhile, Uncle Charlie is able to maintain the deception that he's just an easy going uncle coming to stay in cozy Santa Barbara. But then there's an incident where Uncle Charlie subtly yet suspiciously removes part of the newspaper. Charlotte goes snooping and discovers the newspaper describe news of the "merry widow killer", and she starts putting things together. Now I want to be very cautious not to drop spoilers for this one, so I'm not going to say much more about the rest of the film because, honestly, this film is brilliant and you need to see how the story unfolds for yourself because, frankly, for much of the film we never really know for sure is he. Is he a murderer hiding away with them or are we just playing on paranoia? And Joseph Cotton plays the role so smoothly - he's not like a ravenous lunatic but instead he's got the calm, coolness, almost like Anthony Perkins in the film Psycho. When it's the end of the day and he's just chillin in his room, smoking the cigar with that evil grin, we are in the same situation as young Charlie and we have no idea who or what he really is, but he is awful suspicious... Henry Travers plays Joseph Newton, the patriarch of the family, and there's a doughy likeableness about him, I mean come on, he was Clarence the angel for cryin' out loud! And throughout the film he has this amusing banter with Hume Cronyn, where they talk hypothetically about different ways of murdering one another, ironically while, in their house, there very well may be a killer. So further into the film two detectives arrive, played by Macdonald Carey and Wallace Ford, and it's always fun to see overlap with other films I've seen and reviewed recently. Macdonald Carey was the cold killer from "Streets of Laredo" with William Holden and here he's a sharp, well-dressed detective working under a pretense that he just wants to interview members of the family, all the while wanting to find the merry widow killer. Wallace Ford is his sidekick and guy with a camera, who I recently saw in two of the universal mummy films, such as "the Mummy's hand". Both do a good job of helping bring us all closer to knowing who this mysterious Uncle Charlie character is. It's a great film, beautifully filmed, with a number of visually amazing scenes, such as the aerial view of the detectives in pursuit, or scenes of Uncle Charlie talking to Charlotte engulfed in shadow. Hitchcock is brilliant with his use of black and white (I know I ranted about this in the review I did of the Paradine Case) and this film is no exception. Also notable is the filming location Santa Rosa. From what I've read most of the filming was done on location there, or in real houses there, and you can tell. The film just feels so real, particularly the parts where Charlotte runs into town - it looks like a realistic, bustling town and not just a Hollywood set. Shadow of a Doubt was apparently Hitchcock's favorite of his own films and I understand why. It's just amazing - brilliant black and white cinematography, the thrilling Dimitri Tiomkin music and amazing performances by all. Definitely check this one out. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_a_Doubt https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/?ref_=tt_pg