Undoubtedly a Classic!

The filming of “Shadow of a Doubt” came during a prolonged low point in Hitchcock’s early Hollywood career. For almost five years running prior to this 1943 release, “Hitch” had been mercilessly and cruelly tormented by independent uber-producer David O. Selznick (DOS). Selznick believed himself to be an utmost guarantor in high taste and a connoisseur in the fine art of filming. Selznick was a notoriously controlling figure that it has been said did more “directing” than any of his directors.

By using his power, Selznick would often place ludicrous demands on his directors ordering them to stick by the letter to texts such as “Gone With the Wind” and Hitchcock’s own “Rebecca.” This of course did not assist Hitchcock, an authoritative figure in his own right. Selznick had given Hitchcock the run-around since he signed with the producer in the late 1930’s. Even before signing a contract with Selznick International Pictures, Hitchcock had to second-guess whether Selznick’s desire to sign him were genuine.

After keeping Hitchcock on his toes for months after signing him with a proposed, yet non-existent Titanic project; Selznick then repeatedly denied Hitchcock the approval to continue with their approved collaboration “Rebecca.” Following the critically and commercially successful Oscar winning “Rebecca,” Hitchcock realized he had made a ghastly mistake signing with Selznick.

Firstly, Selznick demanded complete creative and artistic control over any Selznick picture. Secondly, Hitchcock’s contract with Selznick was shameful with clauses that could enact a three-month layoff with no salary, whenever Selznick felt like it and with a rewards system that allowed Selznick to collect a percentage of any bonuses provided to Hitchcock whilst under contract to Selznick International Pictures. But the third and most damning clause for Hitchcock involved restrictions on being loaned out to other studios. Not only would Selznick charge an astronomical fee for any loan out, but he would receive box-office gross percentages and more importantly to Hitchcock, a veto upon any project which he deemed poor or not reputable to be aligned with the Selznick name.

Though both were commanding figures, Hitchcock and Selznick each held different views over good filmmaking. Selznick believed in using only the finest literary sources and creating melodramatic critical and commercial winners. Hitchcock however was interested primarily in crime pictures: a sub-class genre in interwar Hollywood. “Hitch” loved to create suspenseful thrillers that proposed dilemmas, established audience uncertainty and pushed the boundaries of censorship; all with typical Hitchcock flourishes of light comedy and fabulous set pieces interwoven into the film. Certainly their ideological differences can be summed up in Selznick calling “Hitch” the “Master of Melodrama”, while the press dubbed “Hitch” the more aptly titled “Master of Suspense”.

By the beginning of filming “Shadow of a Doubt”, Hitchcock had not worked with DOS since “Rebecca”, three years prior. The pair had argued bitterly over both creative and financial differences. Following “Rebecca” Hitch had used his agent (ironically) David O. Selznick’s brother Myron to shop him around to quickly rid himself of Selznick, as well gain a reputable body of work in America and earn much need funds to cover Hitchcock’s expensive relocation to California. During the period between “Rebecca” and “Shadow of a Doubt”, Hitchcock filmed four films of varying types, with only “Saboteur” being close to a Hitchcock original: the unique, self-authored works he believed he should be doing for Selznick. His other pictures during this time included the war thriller “Foreign Correspondent”, the Cary Grant vehicle “Suspicion” and the screwball comedy “Mr and Mrs. Smith”, which Hitchcock directed with little knowledge of the comedic brand, chiefly because of his fondness and friendship with its star Carole Lombard.

Of the latter three films only “Foreign Correspondent” had been independently produced, while the other films were created for RKO. But RKO was crumbling following the critical and financial debacle of a little film called “Citizen Kane”. Not wanting to go back to Selznick, “Hitch” was pursued by a Jewish rabbi-cum-film producer at Universal named Jack H. Skirball. Skirball was an ardent fan of Hitchcock’s work and wasn’t deterred by the fees Selznick was quoting to loan out his still contracted Hitchcock. After hiring Hitchcock, Skirball allowed him the creative freedom and funds he desired, even managing to provide for a series of bonuses that could go straight to Hitchcock and not to Selznick.

Hitchcock’s first film for Skirball was “Saboteur”: a wartime thriller that used the wrong-man plot vehicle, Hitchcock would so successfully use throughout his career. Yet, unlike his previous work, “Saboteur” allowed him to establish an American identity by using recognizable American monuments and landmarks. However it would be his next film “Shadow of a Doubt” that would be his first fully-fledged American piece and his favourite film.

“Shadow of a Doubt” was born out of a desire of Hitchcock’s during the Selznick years to have a new project ready as he was wrapping up his current one. This allowed Hitchcock to keep earning money, while keeping away from Selznick’s iron fist. During the completion of “Saboteur”, Hitchcock had lunched with Gordon McDonnell a promising crime writer who he knew through McDonnell’s wife. McDonnell told Hitchcock a story he created while stranded with a broken car in the wine country of California while trekking across America. The story told of a family’s favourite uncle who suddenly arrives at his sister’s doorstep in California. Unbeknownst to the family, the Uncle is wanted back East for a slew of crimes and it is through his favourite niece Charlotte, nicknamed Charlie (in honour of her Uncle) that his past and true ways are revealed. Hitchcock was impressed with “Uncle Charlie” and asked McDonnell to provide him with the outline for what would become the basis for “Shadow of a Doubt”.

The idea of evil lurking into a small town intrigued Hitchcock, but McDonnell’s outline was weaker than expected. Hitchcock was surprised to find Skirball provided him with costly Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Thornton Wilder to flesh out the play for a few months before Wilder’s military service began. Wilder had produced a slice of Americana in “Our Town” (filmed earlier with William Holden). Wilder was also intrigued by Hitchcock’s premise, but along with Hitchcock the pair opted to change the ending to include a Hitchcock set piece. Wilder understood America better than Hitchcock and created an average American family who lived in a quaint hamlet in the California wine country that could still feel like an Eastern village, a Southern community or a Midwest town. Due to government restrictions on set-costs because of rationing during the war, Hitchcock was able to shoot on location in Santa Rosa, California: a small town in itself with a courthouse in the centre of town, a modern Gothic church and a library covered in peculiar Ivy.

For his characters Hitchcock employed solid acting over star power. In the role of lecturist Uncle Charlie, he hired close-friend Joseph Cotten who had been a success in Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Cotten would be cast against type. Rather than playing the gentlemanly roles he had previously played on stage and for the rest of the decade in (ironically) David Selznick pictures! Hitchcock wanted Uncle Charlie to be a charmer, but also ruthless and callous. As his favourite niece “Young Charlie”, he used three-time Academy award nominee Teresa Wright. Hitchcock filled in the rest of the roles with stage and radio actors such MacDonald Carey as Detective Jack Graham, writer and actress Patricia Collinge as Mrs. Emma Newton (Uncle Charlie’s sister and Young Charlie’s mother), British stage actor Henry Travers as Mr. Joseph Newton and a young Canadian stage actor named Hume Cronyn in one of his first major roles as Herbie Hawkins: Mr. Newton’s bespectacled and befuddled friend.

The film opens up with a recurring image of couples dancing to a waltz. The waltz’s melody is hummed throughout the film by various characters and is used wonderfully by Hitchcock as a typical “Hitchcockian” device that is deployed with a masterful conclusion. From then the film moves to a boarding house in a working-class street in New Jersey. Lying on his bed, smoking a cigar and with money spread all around him is Uncle Charlie. From the get-go Cotten is a revelation with his cool, poised style and unsettling demeanour. His landlady informs Uncle Charlie that there are two “friends” outside waiting for him. Despite telling her he does not know them, Uncle Charlie does not appear panicked though. Instead he coolly slips out the house in broad daylight: masterfully escaping from their clutches.

Hitchcock then contrasts Cotten’s character with Teresa Wright’s Charlie. Young Charlie is a bored American gal who has had enough of her family. While this may seem as though it’s a foretelling of Natalie Wood in “Rebel Without A Cause”, Charlie has at least some hope. Her hope is in the form of her Uncle who she is smitten about. She believes they are like twins and suddenly has the urge to ask him to visit the family and provide them with a little excitement in their dull, dreary lives. She then leaves home to send an urgent telegram to her Uncle.

Little does Young Charlie know that her Uncle has already telegrammed the family that he will be making a short visit in California: a trip that involves him spending his hours on the train pretending to be terminally ill. Upon his arrival, we see how much Charlie dotes upon her Uncle. She thinks the world of him and when he brings the family presents, she tells him that his arrival alone is enough for her, before he provides her with an antique emerald ring.
The entire family is happy by Uncle Charlie’s arrival. Emma Newton (Charlie’s mother) is especially happy about her younger brother finally being with her after a prolonged absence. Yet, Emma’s youngest daughter a bookworm named Ann (Edna May Wonacott) becomes uneasy around Uncle Charlie.

In fact Uncle Charlie’s behaviour soon turns erratic and often irrational. He repeatedly destroys the family newspaper before Mr. Newton reads it; he plans to open an account at Joe’s bank with an initial sum of $40,000, yet nobody in the family truly knows his occupation; and he refuses to answer questions or have his photograph taken by two men who claim they are part of a government survey talking to average American families.

Though his charming ways, Uncle Charlie even magnetizes Charlie’s love struck friends towards him, yet his behaviour raises questions and suspicions in his niece, who believes she senses something wrong with her Uncle and that he is hiding a secret. This angers Uncle Charlie who attacks his favourite niece about her questioning before telling her he was only joking.

Charlie soon becomes more worried by the increasing appearance of the two men outside the house, who her mother has invited in. She is confronted by one of the men who begins to woo Charlie: only to later reveal his true identity as not a civil servant, but to her utter horror as a Detective named Jack Graham. Graham reveals his real reasons for being in Santa Rosa and Charlie soon tries to get her Uncle to leave the quaint town.

But this is not easy. Charlie’s mother adores her brother and it would destroy her to see him go. However, a series of events occur that further question Uncle Charlie’s character and his relationship towards his favoured niece that result in a chilling set-piece finale.

As usual I have tried to not reveal the end or the main incidents of the film, which is one of Hitchcock’s most unsung and finest achievements. The script composed by Thornton Wilder and humorist Sally Benson is one of Hitchcock’s finest. This is a film that has a string of powerful speeches and commentaries on American life, but which is intersected by hilarious and subtle gags and witty quips that provide effective, yet understated comic relief to a dark subject. The script is filled with faint in-jokes about Hitchcock’s love of mystery and other subjects, particularly in haughty literary seven-year old complaining of the lacking nature of her father’s pathetic mystery novels, as well as darkly humorous jibes regarding the mental state of Uncle Charlie after his accident as a boy.

The running banter between Hume Cronyn and Henry Travers is the film’s most noticeable deployment of comic relief, as they argue over dinner and outside Church (among other places), about what would be the greatest and most efficient way to murder an individual without being caught. This is easily some of Hitchcock’s best use of comic relief in any of his pictures.

The intimate location shooting is another plus for the film providing with a greater sense of evil slithering into a world of goodness. Hitchcock’s cameraman Joseph A. Valentine provides some of the greatest images and devices ever used in a Hitchcock film. Yet it is the acting that shines above it all. Every actor easily slides into his or her role with a feeling of comfort. Teresa Wright is splendid as the doting questioning niece who is already the head of this dull American family. Cronyn and Travers are excellent together in providing the film with light in moments of darkness. Edna May Wonacott also deserves merit as the bookish and precocious Ann. But the best performances are easily played by Patricia Collinge as Emma Newton and Joseph Cotten as her brother Charles.

You cannot feel sympathy for Collinge who plays her role as the matronly reminiscent Emma Newton who wants the best for her family, but doesn’t want to lose Charles again. But it is Cotten who proves to be the giant in this picture. His performance his smooth and edgy, charmingly debonair yet deliciously wicked. This is one of his few darker roles, yet it comes across as one of his greatest performances and one of the best lead acting performances in any previous or future Hitchcock film.

I also particularly enjoyed how Hitchcock allows us to feel a degree of sympathy for the often-vile Uncle Charlie when he is forced to leave and about the sadness his leaving will cause Emma. Also I feel given the speeches he makes throughout about the horrible nature of this world, that perhaps his demise was a carefully crafted one to avoid the suicide-wary censors.

It’s easy to see why Hitchcock liked the film: the quaint town in the wine country, artistic control, the easy-nature of Wilder and Cotten and the stimulating script. Perhaps Hitchcock did get too carried away with this film. It feels particularly towards the end a little overlong and dragging in parts. But overall this is a stellar piece with a slippery concept and a fine cast.

Whereas the theme of evil entering the small town has been used before and since “Shadow of the Doubt”, the coolness and debonair intellectual charm Cotten’s character provides is unlike anything else in comparable topical pictures such as “Night of the Hunter.”

The DVD itself could have been a little better. The extras are fine including a small thirty-minute documentary on the making of “Shadow of a Doubt”, art director Robert Boyle’s storyboards, a trailer, cast bios etc. But I found the picture itself to be lacking. While the picture is for the most part clean, I felt Universal could have gone that little extra bit -considering its Hitchcock’s favourite “Hitchcock”- to remove some of the more obvious scratches, nicks and eras of dust that dot the film. The sound quality was somewhat low, but was for the most part clean and sprite with little or no pops or crackles.

“Shadow of a Doubt” is easily one of Hitchcock’s best pieces. Perhaps a little too lengthy, but nevertheless a fantastic artistic triumph complete with many of his various traits. The oft-unheralded Cotten is perfect, genuine and fully realized as the amiable Uncle Charlie. While I would not recommend this as a starter film for Hitchcock novices, I would say that this is easily one of his most watchable and important, yet underrated pictures: a minor motion picture classic, but a vital addition to the thriller and Hitchcock canons.

Recommended without a doubt.