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dude did you notice the incest vibes? this bitch wanted to straight up fuck her uncle! dude, it was 1943! hitchcock was so ahead of his time, he literally invented cersei x jamie. if this was made today, they would have banged

Review by brendan o'hare ★★★★½

Hitchcock highlights one of the scariest things imaginable: a weird uncle

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or: Dracula Untold

If most vampire stories are about the paranoia of the other, fear of a strange man from the East who charms the pants off your wife and sucks the blood from her veins, this is about the vampire we know, the favorite uncle who turns out to be a monster. Fittingly, Uncle Charlie is given a lot more shading, character-wise, than more conventional vampires usually get - one thing I'd never really noticed before is how compulsive he is, and how helpless he seems in getting those compulsions under control (watch the way he knocks back those two drinks in the Til Two bar, just to hold himself together in the presence of such temptation), how perhaps…

Review by Sara Clements ★★★

every film noir ever:

character: *breathes*
*music intensifies for no reason causing you to go deaf in the process*

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Alfred Hitchcock gets away with the perfect murder in “Shadow of a Doubt;” the killing of small town optimism - right under America’s nose. 

While propaganda efforts on both sides of the Atlantic ocean mythologised the idea of the homestead in the midst of the Second World War, “Shadow” snuck in. 

With creeping undertones of incest, and abuse of power, it’s as if Hitchcock brought a psychopath home to dinner. And, he did - more or less, in Joseph Cotten. Here, the Orson Welles favorite warps his mild mannered voice into a predatory temptation. Hitchcock is constantly framing Cotten dead center in a medium wide shot - just close enough and symmetrical enough to cause maximal discomfort. 

“Doubt” was Hitchcock’s…

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This works best as a metaphor of the unraveling of childhood naivete. When Uncle Charlie is revealed to be, not a hero, or a twin, to the heroine of the film (also named Charlie), but a villain it unseats expectations she has had her entire life. The reveal is torturous, due mostly to the audience having known Uncle Charlie's true nature from the very first scene in the movie, and this is all brought to light by Hitchcock's close attention to detail throughout, and Teresa Wright's incredible performance which slowly erodes her character as the truth of Uncle Charlie is revealed. Hitchcock's work in the close-up is especially relevant, and that one frame of the ring is searing. A few miscommunications with the pacing and a slapped on romance hold this back from being a masterpiece, but Alfred has nearly arrived, and his confidence is brimming underneath the freedom he gained from working within the Hollywood system.

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96

A nightmare slumber. Frequently acidic and purvy, Hitch's energy is primarily found in cross-talk and the hidden messages of lying with a straight face, all while the camera dances like ballet.

Review by Branson Reese Liked

Had always wondered where we got the phrase "it is very dangerous to have a crush on your wicked uncle"

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yes this is a dark and sinister masterpiece and joseph cotten is the creepiest of all misogynistic creeps in this, but i cannot stop laughing about hume cronyn shuffling in while the family is having dinner and patricia collinge whispers “ugh, he ALWAYS comes by while we’re EATING!” and he just plops down and pulls out a mushroom and tells henry travers about how easy it would be to kill him with this poisonous mushroom while travers is clearly in the middle of eating this roast chicken. i love this character! i’d like to think that when he’s not onscreen he’s constantly brainstorming new ways to murder henry travers and doing nothing else, this is his only interest.

5

the stoker vibes.... yes yes yes

Review by Dante ★★★★½

i love the two guys who are too busy having seinfeld esque converasations about how they would hypothetically murder each other to realize the borderline incest situation going on between Charlie and her uncle who is also named Charlie. one of the most fun Hitchcocks for sure.

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65/100

Had a lot to say about this, but unfortunately I was smacked by the flu the same night; a week later, as I slowly re-enter the world, it's all gone a bit fuzzy. (Some may argue that my low rating relative to its canonical status indicates that the virus had already gone to work on my faculties.) Virtues speak for themselves—Hitchcock, cat-and-mouse, whaddaya need, a road map?!—and it feels to me as if the problems should be equally apparent...yet here I go again on my own like the goddamn Whitesnake drifter. Short recovery-room version: Everything involving the detective who gets romantically involved with Girl Charlie is terrible. Some aspects are so freakishly lame that you'd swear entire scenes are…