Why is this Hitchcock's favorite film?
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jcappy — 15 years ago(June 21, 2010 05:04 PM)
I hope it's not his favorite. It's not nearly as convincing or trustworthy as at least a few others of his films. The Joseph Cotton character seems both too far-fetched and poorly conceivedthe main family members are convincingly natural in comparison. Also, all the scenes prior to the family ones are so much more visually interestingthen the cinematic fall off. There just seemed to be a lot of contrived plotting, contrived humor, and a contrived main characterhe just doesn't convince about half the time.
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zzdalym81 — 15 years ago(July 29, 2010 10:52 PM)
Sorry to be the one to tell you that it was his favorite film. According to his daughter, Pat, he loved the idea of bringing menace into a small town. This was also his first true American film in terms or story, screenwriter, cast and that gave him a fondness for it as well. I love this movie. IMO, Joseph Cotton is wonderful as Uncle Charlie. Of course it's all open to opinion. What works for me, doesn't work for you, which is fine.
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Mrs_Bundy — 13 years ago(June 01, 2012 08:08 AM)
Yes, there's a naughtiness to the enterprise that appealed to him because, let's face it, Hitchcock was a troll. But I happen to think it's his favorite because it's the film he most self-consciously identified with. Believing in the duality of human nature, above all in himself, he may have found a perverse mode of self-expression in the character of his young female protagonist, Young Charlie.
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BreakingDexter — 14 years ago(December 13, 2011 11:47 PM)
I don't get it. I heard Hitch on
The Dick Cavett Show
say if he were to throw all his films out and keep just one, this would be the one he'd keep. He must have been crazy. I don't get the appeal, at all. For a Hitchcock film, it sucked. 4/10 -
aj1111 — 14 years ago(January 02, 2012 10:13 PM)
Sorry I must strongly disagree. This is a great film and my favorite Hitchcock film as well. Is it his best? Well he had so many great ones that is impossible to say. But exactly for the reasons mentioned by the previous poster. Joseph Cotten makes a great villain. His chemistry with Teresa Wright, her realization that her beloved uncle is evil. Hume Cronyn's comic turns describing the perfect murder, etc. You should be more hesitant to call a movie poor just because you don't like or understand it.
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blanchethedancer-649-680699 — 12 years ago(April 04, 2013 02:54 PM)
"Shadow of a Doubt" is probably my second favorite Hitchcock film next to "The Man Who Knew Too Much." The only thing strange about "Shadow of a Doubt" is the odd relationship between Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright. I do not believe that this is typical behavior on how an almost-adult woman reacts to her uncle, even though he was the Merry Widow Killer.
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Forlorn_Rage — 10 years ago(August 05, 2015 02:56 AM)
I don't get it. I heard Hitch on The Dick Cavett Show say if he were to throw all his films out and keep just one, this would be the one he'd keep. He must have been crazy. I don't get the appeal, at all. For a Hitchcock film, it sucked. 4/10
Funny he picks the film without the archetypal blonde/ice blonde in sight, considering his later obsession with Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. -
voided-1 — 14 years ago(February 25, 2012 03:17 AM)
It's possibly my favourite Hitch film too. It's got a bit of everything that makes a great Hitchcock film, and unquestionably the greatest villian in Joseph Cotton.
"Just forget you ever saw it. It's better that way." -
juxtapose70 — 13 years ago(August 10, 2012 12:46 PM)
It's a good film for it's time especially. But there wasn't enough suspense for me. I love all Hitchcock films, but to be honest, Family Plot (his last) is my favourite. I do like the way he throws in dark humour in his movies. For example, Hume Cronyn and Henry Travers always arguing about who could kill who and get away with it better, etc.
That's good, dark humour. Family Plot was full of dark jabs, too.
It's a very enjoyable movie, but not my favourite of his. I can't imagine why he thought it was his best work. Strangers on a train, North by Northwest - PLEASE! -
AZINDN — 12 years ago(June 15, 2013 11:14 AM)
I believe that Hitchcock with Shadow of a Doubt introduced the sinister within the all-American apple pie environment that America believed in. Every element of the "normal" and "typical" setting, characters, and situation had an underside of darkness the shadowy element which Hitchcock relished and brought to the screen in his films. He featured not the ice princess blonde of Grace Kelly type, but a girl next door actress in Teresa Wright who discovered the worst about her idealized uncle Charles, a handsome, elegant, and mysterious fellow personified by Joseph Cotton. Charles was a serial killer and Charlie willingly tries to hide that knowledge from her family, her ability to cover up for him shocking for period audiences to rationalize. The younger siblings are obnoxious, know-it-all Ann and dummy Roger, who never listened to adults. The neighbor and father are fixated with crime novels and murder as after dinner conversation, an odd hobby.
In mirroring the oddness of America's fantasy of itself and its society, Hitchcock illuminated a face of reality that perhaps was his own statement about the world at war environment. He uncovered how America was not a perfect society and was as twisted as other societies that America until late came to realize. Hitchcock was a British citizen and there had been a long campaign to engage America into joining the war against Germany, which it ignored. This was Hitchcock shaking "the sleep walker", e.g., America, into consciousness about the evil that lurked in the everyday norm that surrounded all.
Ew lover, you gonna make me clutch my pearls -
hodie — 12 years ago(September 01, 2013 06:21 PM)
Robert Osborne just reiterated that it was Hitchcock's favorite film. Hitch said (I'm paraphrasing) that the film put murder and violence back where it belonged - in the family.
Get me a bromide! And put some gin in it!