Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

I have seen Shadow of a Doubt several times, and I’m still not sure how old the main character, Charlotte (Charlie) Newton, is. (I’m going to call her Charlotte throughout to avoid any confusion because her uncle is also called Charlie.) I had originally assumed that she was in high school, but this is not stated explicitly. She doesn’t seem to have a job. The only one in the family who clearly does have a job is her father, Joe, and he works in one of the local banks. It’s not even clear that Charlotte and her younger siblings, Ann and Roger, go to school during the events in the film.

The issue about Charlotte’s age is important because Shadow of a Doubt is all about the loss of innocence, specifically the loss of innocence for Charlotte Newton. But maybe her exact age isn’t the most important point because there is no doubt that Charlotte is young and that she is at a disadvantage compared to her Uncle Charlie. She is named for Uncle Charlie, one of her favorite relatives. It’s obvious that Charlotte is young and a bit idealistic; some might even say immature. Her encounters with her Uncle Charlie portrayed in the film put her on an even more unequal footing and thus make her transformation even more dramatic.

Shadow of a Doubt introduces the character of Uncle Charlie first. The narrative starts with him, living in a boardinghouse in New Jersey. Viewers see right away that he is in some sort of trouble and that he is on the run. This kind of introduction would make it seem as though he is the most important character, but I think this is a bit of a trick on Hitchcock’s part to put the initial focus on the villain. The most important character is really Uncle Charlie’s antithesis: his niece Charlotte Newton.

 (This blog post about Shadow of a Doubt contains spoilers.)

When Uncle Charlie arrives for a visit with the Newtons in Santa Rosa, California, he charms everyone. His sister Emma and his niece Charlotte idolize him. Emma romanticizes their shared childhood; Charlotte imagines that being his namesake makes them twins of sorts. She even uses the word twins in a conversation with her Uncle Charlie in the kitchen of the family home:

• Charlotte: “I meant it. Please don’t give me anything.”

• Uncle Charlie: “Nothing?”

• Charlotte: “Oh, I can’t explain it. But you came here and Mother’s so happy. Oh, I’m glad that she named me after you and that she thinks we’re both alike. I think we are, too. I know it. Oh, it would spoil things if you should give me anything.”

• Uncle Charlie: “You’re a strange girl, Charlie. Why would it spoil things?”

• Charlotte: “Because we’re not just an uncle and a niece. It’s something else. I know you. I know that you don’t tell people a lot of things. I don’t either. I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about.”

• Uncle Charlie: “Something . . . nobody knows?”

• Charlotte: “Something secret and wonderful and I’ll find it out.”

• Uncle Charlie: “It’s not good to find out too much, Charlie.”

• Charlotte: “But we’re sort of like twins. Don’t you see? We have to know.”

In spite of her protestations, Uncle Charlie does bestow a gift on his niece. It’s a ring inscribed with other people’s initials. Charlotte is dismayed at first but then accepts the ring. For anyone other than Charlotte, such a detail would raise red flags.

Uncle Charlie is suspected of being the Merry Widow Murderer, which is why two detectives posing as newspaper reporters are in Santa Rosa. According to the newspaper article that Charlotte finds in the local library, one of the suspects in the case may have fled the Northeast. The last victim was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, a Mrs. Bruce Mathewson. B. M. is one of the set of initials inscribed inside the band of the emerald ring that Uncle Charlie gave to Charlotte.

Charlotte defends her uncle when Detective Jack Graham explains the real reason that he is in Santa Rosa with his partner Detective Fred Saunders. But she’s the one in the family who faces the facts and begins to see her uncle more clearly. She doesn’t discount the evidence that she finds about Uncle Charlie, including the inscription inside the emerald ring. She searches for the truth, at first convinced that Detective Graham is wrong about her uncle, but she begins to see that she and her family are wrong about Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie turns on Charlotte when he realizes that she knows about him and his past. He calls her “ordinary,” as if the word is an insult. But Charlotte isn’t ordinary. She is the only one in her family who faces the truth and accepts it.

Charlotte returns the emerald ring to Uncle Charlie one evening when she runs out of the house and he goes after her. When he catches up with her, he tells her his outlook on life: that it’s sordid no matter where you look, and because it is so sordid, it really doesn’t matter what he has done and what he plans to do. By explaining what he thinks about people and about his extremely pessimistic take on life, he places a great burden on Charlotte, someone who is so young, someone he should be able to care for and protect.

When they return to the family home, Uncle Charlie and Charlotte have another conversation, this one on the front walk outside. Uncle Charlie continues to impose his wishes on his niece:

• Uncle Charlie: “Charlie, will you help me?”

• Charlotte: “Help you?”

• Uncle Charlie: “The same blood flows through our veins, Charlie. A week ago, I was at the end of my rope. Oh, I’m so tired, Charlie. There’s an end to the running a man can do. You’ll never know what it’s like to be so tired. I was going to . . . Well, then I got the idea of coming out here. It’s my last chance, Charlie. Give it to me. Graham and the other fellow, they don’t know. There’s a man in the east. They suspect him, too. And if they get him, I’ll . . . Charlie, give me this last chance.”

• Charlotte: “Take your chance. Go!”

• Uncle Charlie: “I’ll go, Charlie. I’ll go. Just give me a few days. Think of your mother. It’ll kill your mother.”

• Charlotte: “Yes, it would kill my mother. Take your few days. See that you get away from here.”

• Uncle Charlie: “You realize what it’ll mean if they get me? The electric chair. Charlie, you’ve got to help me. I count on you. You said yourself we’re not ordinary uncle and niece, no matter what I’ve done.”

• Charlotte: “You go in [the family home]. I’ll be in in a minute.”

Once Charlotte realizes what her uncle is capable of, and he begs her not to say anything, he gives her an unusual argument, and it works. It works because he is repeating Charlotte’s own words. He tells his niece that they are so much alike that they are like twins. And even though Charlotte is horrified by what her uncle has done, she sees some similarities in their personalities.

The scene at the dinner table in the Newton family home when Uncle Charlie talks disparagingly about money, wealth, and widows is quite shocking. It’s also a bit surprising that he would reveal so much at the dinner table in front of his sister’s whole family. In spite of its shock value, I don’t find it to be all that important to the story. The narrative would still be complete without it. The most important scenes are those that include the conversations, one on one, between Uncle Charlie and Charlotte.

One of the most important of their conversations occurs when Uncle Charlie and Charlotte are talking on the porch at night. In that scene, Charlotte tells her uncle first that she will kill him first, before he has a chance to hurt anyone in the family. This conversation occurs after he stages her first “accident” by cutting through one of the stairs on the set of backstairs on the house. After she nearly tumbles to the bottom of the stairs, Charlotte confronts him directly, asking, “When are you leaving, Uncle Charlie?” He decides that he’d rather stay in Santa Rosa, that he doesn’t want to leave the safety of his family, and Charlotte tells him, “. . . I’m warning you. Go away, or I’ll kill you myself. See? That’s the way I feel about you.” It’s a remarkable transformation for someone so young. It’s almost hard to believe, but it’s Charlotte’s response to all the pressure that Uncle Charlie has put on her himself.

The entire film balances on that fulcrum: the struggle between the two Charlies. The film starts with Uncle Charlie, who will do anything to save himself, and ends with Charlotte, who becomes more and more of a force for Uncle Charlie to reckon with. She doesn’t tell anyone what she knows about Uncle Charlie or what she would do to protect her family until the end of the film. Only at the end, during Uncle Charlie’s funeral (which is a celebrated procession), does she and her new boyfriend, Detective Jack Graham, start to talk about the real Uncle Charlie behind his charming façade.

The featurette included on the DVD that I watched, “‘Beyond Doubt’: The Making of Hitchcock’s Favorite Film,” is worth a look. Shadow of a Doubt was Hitchcock’s favorite of his films, and I can see why. It’s one of my favorites, too.

January 12, 1943, release date  •  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock  •  Screenplay by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, Alma Reville  •  Based on a story by Gordon McDonell  •  Music by Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Lehár  •  Edited by Milton Carruth  •  Cinematography by Joseph A. Valentine

Teresa Wright as Charlotte (Charlie) Newton  •  Joseph Cotten as Charles (Uncle Charlie) Oakley  •  Henry Travers as Joseph Newton, young Charlie’s father  •  Patricia Collinge as Emma Newton, young Charlie’s mother and Uncle Charlie’s sister  •  Macdonald Carey as Detective Jack Graham  •  Wallace Ford as Detective Fred Saunders  •  Hume Cronyn as Herbie Hawkins  •  Edna May Wonacott as Ann Newton  •  Charles Bates as Roger Newton  •  Irving Bacon as the station master  •  Clarence Muse as the Pullman porter  •  Janet Shaw as Louise  •  Estelle Jewell as Catherine

Distributed by Universal Pictures  •  Produced by Skirball Productions