The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Hitchcock’s first indisputable masterpiece … Remains one of his most harrowing films, a peek behind the facade of security that reveals loneliness, despair, and death.”

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

For all his associations with the warp and weft of criminal psychology, Alfred Hitchcock only rarely organized his films around the mind of a killer. Enter Shadow of a Doubt, which invades the domestic drama wearing a mirthless smile. Hitchcock’s sixth in America, but his first to shed gothic shadings and spies for something more perverse, the film quickly shuttles between two ends of a nearly telepathic link shared between adolescent Charlie (Teresa Wright) and her namesake, urbane uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). With the law on his trail (he’s suspected to be the ​“Merry Widow Murderer”), Uncle Charlie brings the acid tongue and ruthlessness of noir to the safety of Santa Rosa. His niece, drawn to his spirit of malevolence, takes on the roles of both imperilled investigator and curious student. This 80th anniversary restoration is presented following its selection at this year’s TCM Festival.

“This dark vision [signals] the true transplanting of the master’s touch to the United States … Contemporary critics who keep saying this or that filmmaker has gone beyond Hitchcock should look more closely at a film like Shadow of a Doubt, which becomes deeper and more tantalizing with each viewing.”

Andrew Sarris, Village Voice

“Like Blue Velvet​’s fever dream of transcendental perversity, Shadow of a Doubt is about awakening, the simultaneous darkening and enlarging of the world.”

Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

“A major Hitchcock opus … [A] disturbing penumbra reigns within this film.”

Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir