Overrated and overhyped

Overrated

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

What if the person who you looked up to, the person who you loved most, the person who you trusted and could go to when you're in trouble...What if that person wasn't who they seemed to be? That is what Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 suspense thriller Shadow of a Doubt does so beautifully.In the quiet innocent town of Santa Rosa, California, terror is about to enter in the form of a man named Charlie. He is visiting his sister for a while. She has a daughter that is named after Charlie. Young Charlie looks up to Uncle Charlie as a father figure, someone she loves and who loves her too. But she soon realizes that Uncle Charlie might be on the run from some cops.Hitchcock is widely regarded as the master of suspense which he rightly deserves. There definitely is suspense in this movie but he doesn't use it as much like in Rope or Strangers on a Train where the suspense is built around the movie, this movie focuses on the fear of a person who you know is guilty of a crime but you keep refusing that it's true.Joseph Cotten, who is more well known for Orson Welles' movies like Citizen Kane or The Third Man, masterfully plays Uncle Charlie. It's very similar to the performance of Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs: he's a person who comes around as a complete gentleman, but as you get to know him, he could lash out at you to complete his goal, no matter what. Just the way he talks or how clenches his fists together as he's talking to you is only something Hitchcock can do perfectly.The town is also a perfect setting too. This takes place and was filmed in Santa Rosa, California, my home town. It's kind of cool that one of the most acclaimed directors of all time filmed one of his best movies in a place where I've lived my whole life. Santa Rosa is also the perfect town too, the perfect town where everyone is happy and the landscape is beautiful, unknown of the terror that'll take place.The other actors are also pretty good, but the guy that puts the most effort is Joseph Cotten.Alfred Hitchcock put a lot of effort into the movie and it shows. This is a movie that is the definitive Hitchcock movie. And it just so happened to be, his personal favorite.

Rated 8/10, reviews extremely positive, calling it one of Hitchcock's best achievements... Although acting and directing are good, this is probably only Hitchcock's movie I will not ever watch again. I am aware that thrillers now and then are not exactly the same thing, but in my opinion, this is not thriller no matter which criteria we apply. The story isn't bad, but isn't particularly good either. There's no suspension or mystery and the movie as a whole do not wake any emotions in me and leave no impressions. As if I did not watch it at all. I can not point my finger and criticize any particular flaws, but the overall impression is two hours wasted. From Hitchcock I expected a lot more...6/10

With the rousing score of Dimitri Tiomkin and the wonderful camera work, this captivates from the very beginning. We switch from the tight, small lodging out into wide open and view a chase on foot from above, runners and shadows racing before us as we wonder just what is afoot. As it happens we are to find out that Joseph Cotton's character is guilty almost straight away yet spend the rest of the film in suspense as we doubt ourselves. This partly because of the tale of his personal history and partly because of the love and affection of his niece, a wonderful performance from Teresa Wright. Shot largely on location and using a lovely old property in which the large family tumble this way and that in marvellous abandon while the lady of the house tries to maintain control. I learn from the extras that in the end, more shots were required by Hitch and so a set had to be built anyway replicating the building. A very fine, involving, moving and suspenseful film.

By now, this is the fourth Hitchcock film that I've seen and it certainly is a better representation of what I understood his work to be than SABOTEUR was. SHADOW OF A DOUBT, which Hitchcock said was his favorite, is a rather simple tale that explores one of his favorite themes: mistaken identity. Joseph Cotten (THE THIRD MAN) plays "Uncle Charlie" who visits his family for a visit in Santa Rosa, California. However, he's not quite what his young niece Charlie remembers. One thing I've noticed about Hitchcock's films is the various ways he's able to create tension and suspense in a way that keeps the viewer hooked. Some of the elements he uses includes light and shadow, camera angles, the score, etc. All of them came together in a rather cohesive way that kept me interested in seeing where the story would go. This film also captures an America in transition. The world created here isn't the paranoia-filled one of SABOTEUR, but still one where suspicion is very palpable and there's a sense that trust is becoming less of an innate quality in Everytown, USA. Like in SABOTEUR, there are two characters who serve as thematic counterpoint to each other. Here, they are the two Charlies. Joseph Cotten's character is somewhat of an idealized figure for his young niece (Teresa Wright), but the reality of how cynical and pessimistic he really is gets revealed over the course of the film. I thought it was a brilliant way of showing how expectations measure up when faced with reality. There's also the "is he/isn't he?" sense of if he's really even the person he purports to be, which plays into the themes of suspicion and trust. One thing I wasn't entirely expecting was the awkward sexual tension (in a few scenes) between the two Charlies, which added an incest layer that helped to flesh out the tense relationship between them. If there's anything weak about the film, the ending was a bit abrupt and a romance that develops between young Charlie and a detective seemed to be shoehorned in (and provided for an unnecessary coda. Still, I liked this film very much and it bodes well for the successive Hitchcock films I'll be viewing later this month.