|
***1/2 (out of ****) 2010 Thoughts: The Wife and I got "Shadow of a Doubt" from Netflix around the same time as "I Confess." We liked it but weren't blown away. It's only been in the intervening years that "Shadow of a Doubt" has gradually crept into our subconscious to become something of the definitive statement on its subject matter. 2008 Thoughts: Lots of Dmitri Tiomkin's overwhelming score could be handily replaced with footsteps and other creepy ambience, and the thriller aspects aren't Hitchcock's best. But in the case of "Shadow of a Doubt," being a good thriller isn't what Hitchcock seems interested in. What works like gangbusters, however, is the relationship between a budding teenage girl named Charlie and her unhinged and possibly murderous uncle of the same name. "Shadow of a Doubt" shows them together for the first time since she became a teenager. She runs out to meet him at the train. He tells her to close her eyes and slips a ring on her finger. She says they are linked telepathically . . .and then my wife pauses the DVD and says: "Do you think their relationship is a little, er, um, uh . . . " And I say: "I think it's VERY ‘er, um, uh'." Uncle Charlie shows up like a breath of fresh air in their bland NoCal town, and everyone loves him. Pity he might be the "Merry Widow" Murderer, killing rich old widows and taking their money. At first girl Charlie big-eyed and breathless about her uncle. Then she has to grow up real fast. The murders and detectives and sneaking about are exaggerations of her need to grow up out of her relationship with Uncle Charlie. The relationship doesn't just hint at being sexually inappropriate, but can only exist as part of a naive worldview. It's a worldview that Uncle Charlie, paradoxically, benefits from, but also wants to purge from little Charlie. Girl Charlie starts the movie bemoaning how smalltime life is one endless boring cycle. Later on her diatribe sounds an awful lot like Uncle Charlie giving his motivation for disposing of rich widows. (That motivation is articulated in a brilliant single-take that turns from a profile shot into an unbearably close POV). The potential for incest is played very, very low: the two Charlies refer to each other as "twins," share a nearly-psychic connection, and each begins "Shadow of a Doubt" in identical shots in their respective beds, hundreds of miles apart. So, yeah, they aren't just twins, they start out in bed together. Once she begins to fear him, it's only a few minutes before they're in a bar together, hissing at him like Scarlet Johanssen mad at Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation." The uncle is played by Joseph Cotten, best known for "The Third Man" and "Citizen Kane," here alternating between creepy and charming. He is magnificent. The younger Charlie is Theresa Wright, and she's radiant, too, blushing, turning away, and bubbling with youth. The small-town script is co-written by no less than "Our Town" scribe Thornton Wilder. The script reads like a proto-"Blue Velvet," in which secrets and ulterior motives lurk beneath suburban, utopian surfaces. Girl Charlie's schlub of a dad (Clarence from "It's a Wonderful Life") is fascinated by murder and crime magazines, and shares his weird obsession with a too-old-to-live-with-his-mother neighbor (Hume Cronyn). Girl Charlie's mother, meanwhile, has an equally unhealthy adoration for her younger brother that rivals her daughter's. In the book "Hitchcock / Truffaut," both Hitchcock and Truffaut agree they like all the actors involved except for the detective who limply steals young Charlie's heart (Macdonald Carey). He's a bit stiff, for sure, and kind of a dweeb, winning her over with arguments about how normal they both are. Maybe that's the point. After her opening tirade against the average and the routine, girl Charlie gets a taste of murder and a deeply transgressive relationship, and she retreats back into the drably familiar. As often is the case with Hitchcock, the heroine's retreat into middle-America is more cynicism towards our collective lack of intestinal fortitude than it is a defense of the status quo. Similarly, the Merry Widow Murderer's victims are not humanized or even seen. Monday, February 18, 2008 Copyright © 2008, 2010 by Peter Kovic (aka Friday + Saturday Night Movie Critic) SHADOW OF A DOUBT ***1/2 (out of ****) Starring Joseph Cotten, Theresa Wright, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, and Macdonald Carey Directed by Alfred Hitchcock + written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, from the story by Gordon McDonell 1943 108 min NR |
|
|
All content © Copyright 2007 - 2011 Insert Logo Productions
|