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Shadow of a Doubt
Shadow of a Doubt | |
| Rated: | None |
| Director: | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Cast: | Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Hume Cronyn |
| Release Date: | 1943 |
| Genre: | Drama |
At the Charles Theatre noon Oct. 15, 7 p.m. Oct. 17, and 9 p.m. Oct. 20
By Heather Joslyn | Posted 10/12/2005
This is where Alfred Hitchcock met Our Town—literally. Our Town author Thornton Wilder wrote the screenplay for this 1943 drama, which Hitch (and some critics, including this one) considered his best. The criminally underrated 1940s ingénue Teresa Wright plays a small-town girl who’s excited to see her visiting bachelor Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten)—until she begins to suspect that he’s behind a series of murders involving wealthy widows. Cotten is convincing both as a charmer and a crook, and he keeps the is-he-or-isn’t-he? wheel spinning right up until the genuinely scary climax. Hume Cronyn is slyly funny as a nerdy neighbor who’s obsessed with homicide.