MovieChat Forums > Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Discussion > I never get sick of this movie !

I never get sick of this movie !

posted 8 years ago by RvaBread22
7 replies | jump to latest

I know people ponder on why Hitchcock liked this film so much. They consider it "average thriller" or whatever. But I can see why he did . There's something about the film that is very intriguing and timeless- even to this day. Its the perfect blend of superficial sweetness with dark subtext. The pacing is great, the acting and script is phenenomenal. Its just a really good story. I have seen many other Hitchcock movies- including "Psycho" but I don't desire to watch them over and over the way I do this one.

[–] hilaryjrp 8 years ago

Neither do I. It's problem is that it's too short--way way WAY too short. For its era, I can understand the brevity, and the film still packs a punch because of the mixture of dread with daily all-American life. But it's too brief, so that young Charley's dread isn't sufficiently realized...for the viewer in 2016.

[–] RvaBread22 8 years ago

A lot of "film noirs" tended to be short (under 2 hours). The movie "Laura" is also short. I guess maybe they felt people didn't want to be held in suspense for long periods of time . However, I think maybe its being shorter makes me want to watch it over and over again. Its a good film to watch when you are short on time, lol.

[–] amyghost 8 years ago

Agreed. There are so many layers to this film, you keep finding nuances in it with every viewing. It's a simple (and yes, brief) mystery/thriller on the face of it, but Hitchcock and Wilder added so many things going on below that surface that it grabs you anew each time.

[–] PeterBlues (790) 6 years ago

tell me about it, i used to get tcm (turner classic movies) and even though they showed the same movies over and over i still tuned in to see them, i came in pretty late in this airing elsewhere, but was just blown away by the dialogue as often the case with old movies as well as the people performing it, it's so intense, i've gotten unused to this since tcm shut down in my country. hume cronyn sure was in movies for a long period of time, i saw him much in 1990's flicks. the speech about women was a riot then an older madame replying "don't let my women's club hear that or you'll be lynched", like something right out of the comedy series "married with children" made in the 1990's. i don't have a problem with the running time of movies from this era, and the classic horror films are just about an hour long.

📽

out of this world,
set in state not explainable by words,
but after surviving the experience,
a new man when crossing back this old border,
what it took for me to believe on this earthly ground,
now longing for my real home on the other side.

[–] MissMargoChanning (6630) 6 years ago

Yes. I have watched this one countless times. It never gets old.
I like to pop it in the player on a lazy afternoon, and I often do.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think it is a nice, non-violent precursor to Psycho.

They are both rather short films, that tell their respective stories with clean, streamlined compactness.

They were both filmed on soundstages at Universal -- though Psycho went out under the Paramount banner. Though the films are 17 years and an era apart, they rather look alike at times -- and center on two "old two story houses."

They are both set in "small town Northern California." Shadow of a Doubt was set in Santa Rosa - a real small city north of San Francisco and inland from Bodega Bay(where The Birds was set.) Psycho was set in the ficitional "Fairvale," but the "Shasta County" map and police shoulder patch in the DA office scene at the end pinpoint Psycho as being set about 200 miles northeast of Santa Rosa...not very far on a nationwide map.

Both films center on a psychopathic killer who is LIKED -- Uncle Charlie by his family, by the townsfolk, by rich widows -- Norman Bates by Marion Crane(at least in their first conversational moments.) WE like Norman Bates for a fair amount of Psycho. Uncle Charlie, I'm not so sure. His coldness and contempt for others ("I think the whole world is a joke") are pretty much upfront from the get go. But OTHERS like him.

Both films pit that psycho against female heroines who win -- its not Marion in Psycho -- its Lila.

Of course, there are differences in the films. Psycho had a big dose of shocking bloody violence(and shocking scary murder music) that changed film history in 1960 and made audiences scream hard. Shadow of a Doubt, trapped in the heavily censored Hays Code forties, doesn't even SHOW Uncle Charlie killing anyone.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And yet: there is an underlying perversion to Shadow of a Doubt, mainly in the coded erotic attraction of both his sister and his eldest niece to Uncle Charlie..and in the truly raging and murderous character OF Uncle Charlie as he reveals himself. There is this: the Til Two bar scene reveals a "smoky sordid hell" right there in the middle of Main Street, USA. The sad young waitress suggests a person who has not done well in this town...she seems broken and consigned to her fate at a young age. It is here that Uncle Charlie tries to expose Young Charlie to the REAL world..."an ugly sty." Reality is, of course, somewhere in between.

My point: these sordid, sexual and psychopathic touches around the edges of Shadow of a Doubt may not match Psycho for shock value, but they join Psycho in conveying the dark secrets hiding within and around small town complacency.