10/7/2023 0 Comments Shadow of a doubt 1943 nominations![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, the entire film is structured as an elaborate “coming of age” for adolescent Charlie, who must not only give up her childish fantasies about her uncle, but must protect her mother (Patricia Collinge) from learning the truth about her cherished younger brother, and, in one of the film’s weaker subplots, falls in love for the first time (with MacDonald Carey, a detective on the case).Īs in his discussion of “Bruno Anthony” (Robert Walker) in Strangers on a Train (1951), Peary once again argues that the villain in this Hitchcock film is worthy of our sympathy. “What do you know, really? You’re just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town.”Ī teenager (Teresa Wright) in a small town hopes that the arrival of her beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) will bring some excitement into her family’s lives soon, however, she learns the devastating truth that Uncle Charlie is the “Merry Widow Murderer”, wanted for killing widows on the East Coast.Īs Peary notes, this “top-grade Alfred Hitchcock thriller” - which he nominates as one of the Best Films of the Year in his Alternate Oscars book - examines the “thin line between the normal and abnormal,” as exemplified by contrasts between the film’s two central characters: “a smart, spirited, typical young woman named Charlie (Teresa Wright) who lives with her average family in an average American town, and her insane itinerant bachelor Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten).” It’s immediately clear, as Peary points out, that “the two Charlies are two sides of the same person”, and that “young Charlie” will have to experience a rude awakening once she recognizes the truth about her beloved namesake. ![]()
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