![]() As suggested several times throughout his life, Hitchcock’s favourite Hitchcock was Shadow of a Doubt. It is fitting then that, over the years when quizzed about which of his 50 or so films was his personal favourite, the choice was one that concerned murder. ![]() As Hitchcock once put it: “a glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality.” ![]() Yet suave Uncle Charlie was arguably also an expression of its director’s inner persona. Central to this celebrated, tense film is an alarming streak of pessimism, one inhabited brilliantly by Cotten’s unnerving and irredeemably nasty character. And as the imitative but inferior Stoker shows, it’s the kind of film that casts a long shadow.“The whole world is a joke to me,” claims Joseph Cotten as the villainous Uncle Charlie in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt. It’s subversive, nail-biting, eerie, and gorgeously shot - no wonder Hitch often cited it as his finest achievement. Hitchcock picks at the placid surface of small-town America like a scab, imbuing each scene with deep-running undercurrents of menace. On the surface, Cotten is the local boy made good, but he’s actually rotten to the core. Written by Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt is essentially what would happen if you let loose a monster in Our Town. ( EXTRAS include a recycled but informative making-of documentary.) Joseph Cotten plays the original Uncle Charlie, a suave, beloved relative living with his sister’s family until his niece (Teresa Wright) uncovers the murderous secret behind his meticulously crafted facade, which propels the movie toward its iconic final sequence aboard a train. Hitchcock’s brilliant film (also newly available on Blu-ray) is still just as unnerving and masterful 70 years later.
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