Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Monday, October 17th, 2005How much do you know about your uncle?
Shadow of a Doubt is the odd but interesting child of the mating of Alfred Hitchcock and playwright Thornton Wilder. It doesn’t represent the best work of each but the pair is still worthwhile nonetheless.
We meet Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten) in Philadelphia as a nattily dressed man lying in a cheap Philadelphia apartment. His nosy and talkative landlady pokes her head into tell him that two men are looking for him. The film doesn’t let us in on the secret of who they are and why they. He slips out and eludes them. Deciding to lie low, he wires his sister, Emma Newton(Patricia Collinge) in Santa Rosa, California that he’s coming to visit for a while. This is music to the ears of his neice and namesake, Charlie (Teresa Wright), who thinks that her favorite worldly uncle will be just the thing to bring some excitement to her boring small town existence.
