Shadow of a Doubt (1942)

Nordic Universal Blu-ray edition



Great crime thriller and one of the few Hitchcock films i like. So, yes, i'm no Hitch fan and stop reading here if you going to be mad at me
because of this. I know film critics hail him for everything he has done, as for Rear Window but no one mentions Cornell Woolrich the
man who wrote the story, the forgotten master of crime fiction, and that Hitch's film almost word for word films his great story.

I do hate The Birds (a really, really bad horror movie), North by Northwest (an awful children comedy movie with an awful Cary Grant),
The Man Who Knew to Much (with an awful, awful Doris Day and the worst song on film ever, the should be a crime against humanity
one Que Sera, Sera, whatever will be etc. I've often shouted this song when showering ... and totally against my will that is, you will be
forever lost after hearing it, it burns itself into your poor brain, so beware of this pest), the over the top melodramatic and just hysterical
1940's stinkers Spellbound and Notorious, Marnie with bad acting male bimbo Sean Connery, that eternal smug grin on his face, yuck!

A few of his films i do like though: Rebecca (even if it's melodramatic and hysterical), and Psycho (maybe the most influental horror film
ever made), some really old British one i can't remember the name of (a man with a bomb on a bus something), and then this one.

Here follows some ramblings from a film nerd ... Beware of boredom!

This thriller is delightfully toned down, stringent and with great acting from one of my all time favourite actors - Joseph Cotten, and also
from Teresa Wright. No irritating childish stuff and no melodrama, just straight to the point. Joseph Cotten, aaaaaaaaah, he had that
ability to be likeable and look like a regular guy (OK, not in this film as he's a murderer, OK, in Bava's Baron Blood too) and he acted in
some of my favourite movies of all time, as The Magnificent Ambersons and Citizen Kane by Welles and The Third Man by Carol Reed.
The Ending scene of The Third Man may be the greatest film scene ever, so sad and so powerful. When Alida Valli just walks past
Cotten at the graveyard after the 2nd funeral of Harry Lime, without even looking at him, full of disgust and to the Anton Karas theme.
That's life and , he will never forget it, he will re-live it at the moment of his death, whisper her name just like Welles did Rosebud

Well, back from the deliria of a cinephile and to this film.
The beloved uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) suddenly arrives to the sleepy small Californian town Santa Rosa for a visit to his sister
Emma Newton, her husband Joseph and his niece Charlie, named after him. Charlie (Teresa Wright) has always adored her uncle and
everyone is happy and everything is daisy. The 2 has an almost mental connection and at first the very naive young Charlie seems
almost mentally retarded in her adoration of her uncle. But this child-woman is about to wake up from her pipedream.

She's a very smart kid really, and with almost psychic abilities she start to notice strange things about her uncle. He's camera shy and
don't want his picture to be taken and 2 men turn up and start to snoop around, supposedly for a questionnaire, but look like cops.
The Blu-ray sleeve says the following:

"Young Charlie begins to suspect her uncle of being the Merry Widow murderer (he has strangled 3 women and stole their money and
jewelry) , and a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. As his niece draws closer to the truth, the psychopatic killer has no choice but to
plot the death of his favourite relative in one of Hitchcocks most riveting psychological thrillers".

Great stuff and this Hitchcock knew himself as he thought this was his best film. I especially likes the way he depicts Young Charlie's
very un-Hollywood-like but very believable behaviour when she's quite sure of uncle Charlie actually being a killer.
Only annoying man in the film was the creepy cop Jack (badly acting Macdonald Carey) who hits hard on the presumably teenage
schoolgirl Charlie Newton, a disgusting stalker.

Presented in a 4: 3 fullscreen original ratio in black & white with a DTS-HD MA english audio 2.0 with an assortment of subtitles to
choose from incl. swedish and english. Extras: Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's favourite film (35 min), Production drawings
by art director Robert Boyle, Production photographs and a theatrical trailer. Nordic Blu-ray in region ALL (or B)

 

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