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KP-Nuts — 15 years ago(December 02, 2010 02:06 PM)
My wife and I just watched this movie for the first time and we definitely thought there were signs of sexual tension - I guess it is a result of watching a film made in a more innocent time through eyes from a more cynical one. But then with Hitchcock you never know.
That said we both enjoyed this movie and whilst by no means the best Hitchcock movie I have seen it certainly is not the worst.
Better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do! -
ugotit-1 — 15 years ago(December 14, 2010 11:42 AM)
I completely agree with you. I felt there was a little bit more going on between them than just a standard niece/uncle relationship. It's the same subtext that Norman Bates and his mother have in PSYCHO.
We all go a little mad sometimes -
klally — 14 years ago(September 28, 2011 06:43 PM)
Yes, I always thought so, but I'm kind of back-and-forth on whether or not it's mutual. They might both feel some weird attraction, but for some reason I always went with the darker interpretation that it was one-sided from Uncle Charlie. Charlie is young and certainly very naive. If she has a favorite uncle who clearly favored her as well, of course she'd be fawning all over him and wanting to be with him all the time.
It's when she starts wanting to distance herself from him that it gets really weird. It's subtextual of course, but I found her sudden fear and anxiety around him disturbingly reminiscent of the behavior of children who have been victims of sexual abuse. He's always grabbing her and she's always shying away, and the scene where she unconsciously grabs her own wrist where he hurt her really gives me a weird vibe. Also the way she tries to protect her mother from the truth, because it would upset the family and probably kill her mother to know her brother is capable of such a terrible thing. That's not that uncommon when a kid's been abused by a family member. She even tries to protect her younger siblings from Uncle Charlie, like when her little sister Anne begs to not have to sit next to him at the dinner table (though she won't tell her mother why).
It always creeps me out in the restaurant scene the way Charlie pulls her hands away and says "Don't TOUCH me, Uncle Charlie," and on the train when she says "Let me go, Uncle Charlie!" she sounds so hysterical and terrified.
Hitchcock was so good at subtext and sexual tension, especially in a time when that stuff would be censored if it was too obvious. Just look at the homoerotic tension between the protagonist and antagonist of "Strangers on a Train," which also had that theme of the kind of doppelganger, two-sides-of-a-coin thing. "Shadow of a Doubt" is the same. -
SanSanSan — 14 years ago(January 16, 2012 07:20 PM)
The relationship between them definitely appears ambiguous (deliberately, of coursesuch things don't happen in a Hitchcock movie by chance), but I interpret it a little differently: I see the uncle as a repressed homosexual who consciously plays off of his niece's idolisation of him.
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moviegurl16 — 14 years ago(February 19, 2012 12:22 PM)
who wouldn't? joseph cotten's hot! If I was a girl living in the 40s, he'd be my crush. But seriously, I think she had a crush on her uncle but an admiring crush for him because he's a businessman, adventurous, lives in the city and that's what she wants to be. Because she is at the borderline of leaving girlhood and becoming a woman, like most kids, they take a fondness to uncles or aunts by always hanging around them like charlie does in the beginning.
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filmnoggin — 13 years ago(July 04, 2012 05:57 PM)
I was troubled by their close relationship as well; I wondered whether young Charlie had a crush on the uncle, and he knew it, which explained why he gave her the ring when he was merely trying to keep her from knowing the truth about him. In that case, I'm not sure if it was a mutual crush, but the uncle was using her crush to his advantage. Hitchcock probably made this uncomfortably close relationship ambiguous on purpose to keep the audience wondering and slightly uncomfortable about it.
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LateNightCable — 13 years ago(October 02, 2012 09:17 PM)
Just like a modern day audience to come up with a connection like possible familial romance. What seems like an eerie closeness between the Charlies to a current day audience, is simply an intimate dynamic reflective of the secrecy between them. Little Charlie's desire to trust her uncle is innocent, even though she can't. And cold uncle Charlie's desire to keep up appearances and read little Charlie's thoughts. As of course little Charlie was the only one in the family who was onto her uncle. If it came off as a creepy intimacy, then that was the intent. Uncle Charlie was a murderer after all
An aside which has also been mentioned, is that family members tended to be much closer in those days, which is true. Aside from the fact that uncle Charlie was an adored uncle who his family hadn't seen in a long time
" Cristal, Beluga, Wolfgang Puck It's a f#@k house." -
eelb — 12 years ago(January 15, 2014 02:53 AM)
Young Charley has led a sheltered upbringing, with many boring men in her life. Witness the Hume Cronym character, who is roughly young Charley's age, and his appearance and behavior. Uncle Charley is the only charismatic man that has been in her life. Obviously a role model for her of the kind of man she would desire. I don't think her admiration for him quite reaches the level of her desiring him sexually, but it's certainly not too far off.
As for Uncle Charley, I don't think he's sexually driven. If he was, his nefarious plans would've included something other than murder. Given her hotness, most psychos would plan something a little more interesting to include in her demise. Maybe if it wasn't 1943, Hitchcock could have gotten away with something a little more adventuresome in that regard. But the film gives no indication Uncle Charley is motivated by sex.
It's interesting when the young detective enters the picture, that he also is an attractive man of more worldly experiences, that young Charley finds appealing. He comes with the excitement of Uncle Charley, but with a moral compass, and minus the psychotic behavior. Also, his entry into her life, coincides with her realization of Uncle Charley's dark side. -
red_rackham_77 — 13 years ago(March 30, 2013 09:17 AM)
It seemed a bit incestuous between Charlie and Charlie (very twisted but I loved it) the scene where he looked at Charlie and the detective talking, his hands looked like he wanted to strangle someone. Either the detective or Charlie to keep her from getting taken by someone, you know "If I can't have her no one will".
I loved this movie, it is the perfect thriller movie with a twisted villian and his "innocent love". -
mmcaravaggio — 12 years ago(September 26, 2013 05:33 PM)
It's cute that he is given her bed to sleep in. Why not? Then he walks to the flower vase and plucks a flower. Why not again? Lots of good stuff on the metaphoric level here. And I've only watched ten minutes. And there's a ring he gives her later? Even better. A subliminal marriage. Good old Hitch. A complete perv to the end. You see the same stuff in The Birds, which I teach a lot. Mother/son love there, along with trapped woman fantasies. A friend sees Vertigo as necrophilic regarding women, which wouldn't surprise me, given the female corpse scene in Frenzy