We're not just an uncle and a niece. It's something else. I know you. I know you don't tell people a lot of things. I don't either. I have a feeling that inside you there's something nobody knows about... something secret and wonderful. I'll find it out.
-Young Charlie

Alfred Hitchcock's second film for Universal Studios would end up being the legendary director's personal favorite of his own work. After giving up some control to make Saboteaur for the studio the year before, Hitch was back in full force and calling all the shots on what some consider his first "American Masterpiece".

It's a psychological thriller that is built on greatly detailed and layered characters that make the film a…

Alfred Hitchcock Revisited (#4)

"...You're just an ordinary little girl living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning in your life and you know perfectly well there's nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep filled with peaceful, stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares."

Shadow of a Doubt is considered the personal favorite of the master director and is also on of his highest regarded films and it makes sense. While his detective and murder stories have been regarded for their unconventional and unique characters and settings, Shadow of a Doubt is perhaps his most unconventional and unique of them…

Part of the Alfred Hitchcock Sound Era Films In Chronological Order project

After the hugely disappointing Saboteur, Hitchcock's early career inconsistency is notable once again as he switches back to a theme he explored very well for Suspicion of a trusting young woman duped by a man she thought was perfect.

Here, the relationship is rather different as Teresa Wright plays doting niece to mysterious uncle Joseph Cotten. He drops in on her sleepy suburbia-set all-American family to get away from two guys who seem to follow him around. Before long, she realises that her uncle might not be quite the man that she thought he was.

The splendid trick that Hitchcock pulls here is that we never actually find…

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…

An early Alfred Hithcock classic, before he used technically extravagant action sequences to create thrills. This is grounded, perfectly paced plotting that keeps the audience in the dark and allows our imaginations to take over until the perfectly timed revelation. Adapted from a story by Gordon McDonnell, the script is written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville. Joseph Cotten plays Charlie Oakley, a mysterious man with a secret. After having two unknown men discover his apartment in New York, he decides to visit his family in Santa Rosa, California. Among the members of his family is Charlotte "Charlie" Newton, his naive teenage niece who casually berates her family for being lifeless. She is played by Teresa Wright in…

I'm struggling to decide which I prefer more out of this and Strangers on a Train. The content is wildly different but the themes are very similar, both involving charming but despicable villains that have almost everyone fooled and the resulting encounters with the people that see through the guise. Ah, I just can't decide, I love them both.

I'm rather ashamed to say I completely overlooked this film, and going by the track record of Hitchcock films I have seen, it was a big mistake as even in one of his relatively early efforts he still displays a masterful ability to draw you in and keep you interested and engaged from start to finish.

The relationship between the two…

Dank einer beispiellos dichten Inszenierung, die Hitchcock-gerecht vor visuellen Metaphern strotzt, diese aber weit dezenter einsetzt als in seinen späteren, aggressiveren Werken, lokalisiert sich Im Schatten des Zweifels fast unbemerkt im film noir-Genre. Sind Schauplatz und Situationskomik der Kleinstadtfamilie noch Elemente des heimischen Lustspiels, so verhindert die Präsenz der düsteren noir-Figur Onkel Charlies nicht nur das Genre-Equilibrium (visuell betont durch den bedrohlichen Schatten, den seine Bahn auf das sonnige Santa Rosa wirft, als er dort einfährt), sondern zeigt auch, dass hinter dieser sauberen Fassade der Kleinstadt auch ein potentieller Sündenpfuhl liegt. Durch diese film noir-Ideologie wirft der Film einen subversiven Blick auf ein stereotypes Amerika und ergänzt es um all das, was für das Wohl der Familie unterdrückt oder kompensiert…