Why is this Hitchcock's favorite film?
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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! -
Petronius Arbiter II — 11 years ago(April 15, 2014 08:10 AM)
You're familiar with the concept of synergy? As in "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts?"
This film has it more than any other Hitchcock film I've ever seen, and I've seen almost all of them.
Hitch himself may have loved the premise most, apparently, and all the possibilities it opened up that he would expand upon in his later films. Me, I love most the meticulous craftsmanship transcending itself to become a true masterpiece of High Art.
"I don't deduce, I observe." -
sluggersports — 10 years ago(October 30, 2015 11:38 PM)
I don't know why it's Hitchcock's favorite film, but it's definitely my favorite Hitchcock!
SPOILERS:
For the naysayers are you kidding me? Think about it. Your favorite uncle, who by the way is the person you're named after, is coming to visit. You're thrilled to death, until you slowly start to realize that he may be a misogynistic murderer. When he realizes that you're beginning to investigate, little "accidents" that could have killed you, start to happen.
What about your mother? Like Uncle Charlie points out, the news would be devastating to her and would cause scandal. So, what do you do? I love this movie. -
Noir-It-All — 10 years ago(December 27, 2015 12:43 PM)
It really was interesting that Charlie could not tell her family the true story about her namesake. But, despite her Dad's hobby with his friend she didn't have enough communication with him to share that, and even after Uncle Charlie acted out at the bank. Her mother talked too much did not listen, although mother revealed the effect the accident had on Uncle Charlie-right in front of him. Charlie could have used that as a springboard into revealing the truth but judged that her dingbat mother couldn't handle the truth.