Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, MacDonald Carey; d. Alfred Hitchcock; D+

Sometime when, I was personally afraid to honestly say what I felt about Shadow of a Doubt because I knew it was such a beloved Hitchcock picture. I'd make up the typical excuses "Oh I was tired, I was hungry, I'll watch it again for sure." Everytime I watched it, though, the same feeling remained. In fact, I'm quite sure it intensified. One may scratch their heads, wondering why I loathe this Hitchcock classic yet praise Topaz, which, according to popular beliefe, is a bad Hitchcock film. Frankly, which film is a classic and which is not has no importance to me. What is important is whether or not I liked the film, and I certainly did not enjoy Shadow Of a Doubt.

I won't bother with the plot outside of the fact that the most interesting thing about it is that it's a character study between two seemingly opposing characters: young Charlie (Thersea Wright), and her serial killer uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). This is one of the things that Hitchcock did best, taking two "light" and "dark" characters and connecting them. Strangers on a Train (the seemingly innocent Guy being connected with the undeinably insane Bruno), Vertigo (Madeline and Judy, who turn out to be the same person), Psycho (Of course, Norman and his brutal mother), and Family Plot (the two couples, one a pair of poor goofballs who make money off of acting, the other a pair of rich, sheming jewel theives) all focus on this theme, too. It would seem that they way people talk about this film, that Shadow of a Doubt would show this to perfection. But what I got out of this film wasn't a sense of connection between these two characters, but even a greater sense of difference, for more than one reason: Not only are the two actually polar opposites personality-wise, but also script-wise. 99% of the characters in Shadow of a Doubt are so poorly-written, so one-dementional that it's painful to watch. The only character that's even worth mentioning is Charlie, played to perfection by the always excellent Joseph Cotten. Cotten gives one of the best, if not the best, performances of a killer in a Hitchcock film. Uncle Charlie is the only well-written character in the film. In fact, he's the only three-dementional character in the film. It almost seems that he's this actor, wandering around a cheap backlot where all the houses and people are made of cardboard, and are only standing up because of wooden planks in the back. I had no sympathy for the "good" characters whatsoever, in fact, at the end of the film, I was wishing and hoping for Uncle Charlie to knock off young Charlie so he can get away in that train, hopefully to a better movie where he's surrounded by characters worthy of his presense.

Another, equally terrible thing about this movie, besides it's awful script (save a few brilliant monolouges) and characters (except for Charlie, of course), is its overwhelmingly annoying score. I never liked Dmitri Tiomkin in the first place, and this movie even further reaffirms my feelings. At points I'm not even sure if I can call it an original score because it seems to be based on this one song which the chracters hum all the time. Obviously that song, "The Merry Widow", is symbolic of Charlie who's called "The Merry Widow Killer," but repeating it ten million times in the film score strips that song of it's power, in fact, it strips the entire movie of what little power it had. If Hitchcock thought Tiomkin was doing something brilliant, which he probably did not since, later on, he advised Bernard Herrmann not to do what Tiomkin did, he was sadly mistaken. Then again, it does fit the movie nicely. A terrible score for a terrible movie.

If you don't get it by now, yes I hate Shadow of a Doubt. It's one of the whiniest, poorly-written, annoying films ever made. Why people love it so much I will never know.

© Vert A Go Go Reviews 2001