Rating: 
Summary: Hitchcock's favorite film
Review: SHADOW OF A DOUBT was considered by Hitchcoch as his favorite film; indeed, the film boasts a superb cast and paints the ultimate picture of small-town paranoia.When Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) comes to visit his relatives in Santa Rosa, the foundation is laid for one of Hitchcock's most engaging and suspenseful excursions. When Charlie comes under the suspicion of his niece and namesake (Teresa Wright - MRS MINIVER), and thinks he might be the infamous 'Merry Widow murderer', a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins. As she grows closer to the truth, the psychopathic killer has no choice but to plot the "death" of his favorite niece in order to keep his dirty deeds a secret. Also featuring Patricia Collinge, Charles Bates, Henry Travers, Edna May Wonacott and Macdonald Carey. The DVD also includes the making-of documentary "Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film", production drawings, the trailer and art gallery.
Rating: 
Summary: HITCHCOCKs AMERICA
Review: 1943's SHADOW OF A DOUBT is an allegorical study of Americana seen through the naivete of a typical family in a quiet and slumberous community. When evil comes to town in the embodiment of the beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) it is the perceptive niece Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) that slowly uncovers his true identity as the Merry Widow murderer. Henry Travers and Hume Cronyn spend their evenings concocting ways to commit the perfect murder unknowingly under the watchful eyes of the genuine article. Evil takes many shapes and hides behind many facades in broad daylight. Would the wholesome average American community recognize such evil and be willing to deal with it? These are questions that the transplanted Hitchcock would ask about his new home. Another transplant, Dimitri Tiomkin, composed a brilliant score utilizing American idioms laced with the darkness of the tainted soul. This remains one of Hitchcock's best films since it works, as a thriller yet remains a true reflection of a good-natured but generally complacent lifestyle. What is interesting is that Hitchcock shows his usual disdain for police by having the niece foil the Merry Widow murderer and not agent Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey). The vigilant individual is still the screen's most valuable asset.
Rating:
Summary: Terror Comes Home
Review: Hitchcock's films often feature good people who somehow get themselves involved in something not quite kosher which escalates to something they feel they can't report to the police, or else it will be bad for them. "Strangers on a Train" is like that; so is "Rear Window". Here in "Shadow of a Doubt", the same plot device rears its head again, but with a difference. Usually the "bad thing" is rooted in some kind of external event, but in this movie, the young niece uncovers a monstrous secret about her favorite uncle, who is visiting in the family home. This is about the only movie in which I like Teresa Wright (Young Charlie), whom I usually find grating. But here, she does a creditable job as an ordinary girl who must grow up awful quick if she is to defend herself against this wolf in sheep's clothing, Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). I'm amazed by how convincing Joseph Cotten is as Uncle Charlie, the shady murderer whom these naive people take to be a sophisticate. Hard to believe that he didn't go on to make a career of creeps in the movies, but he went right back to his "good guy" roles. For instance, he was capable of a lot more than the artist in the later "Portrait of Jennie", a good movie to be sure, but not a challenging role by any means. The actress playing the mother is very good; I've known many women as "on the edge" emotionally as she is, with an almost morbid sentimentality. The only oddity in the whole cast is MacDonald Carey as the detective-love interest. Mother calls him a nice young man, but he didn't strike me as all that young, and golly, he certainly is no dream boat. Is he supposed to be the "everyman" that most women will wind up marrying, a safe choice after the thrill of knowing an "Uncle Charlie" wears off?
And that brings me to my next observation, that there is something unsavory about the relationship between Uncle Charlie and Young Charlie. Even before Young Charlie finds out his secret, Uncle Charlie seems inordinately interested in the young girl. In today's climate, it doesn't take much imagination to wonder whether there's an incest subtext going on here. First the girl is very fond of her uncle, then can't bear his touching her, while he enjoins her to keep their secret because it would kill her mother to learn the truth. Also, the age difference between Wright and Cotten is not all that much, Hollywood-wise. It is highly conceivable they could've played love interests in a different movie, as she is also about the same amount of years younger than Gary Cooper in "Pride of the Yankees". So, "Shadow of a Doubt" is a somewhat disturbing movie because of its focus in the home and among the family. It is nonetheless very well executed. My only complaint is that it is a little too long; hence the 4 stars rather than 5.
Rating:
Summary: "They're alive--they're human beings!"
Review: The middle-class Newtons of Santa Rosa, California in Hitchcock's film might seem to be very much akin to the idealized smalltown families in M-G-M films during the Thirties and Forties, if not for the fact that they each seem to have initially retreated into their own fantasy, worlds and seem so out of touch with one another. The father lives to discuss the crime magazines he collects with his next-door neighbor. Anne, the fearfully precocious eight year-old daughter, is trying to read all the novels in the town library. Emma, the sentimental mother, often drops into reveries of her idealized childhood with her adored baby brother Charlie. Charlie's namesake niece (Teresa Wright) is convinced her family needs to be shaken out of their doldrums, and is grateful when her beloved uncle (Joseph Cotton) surprises the family with a welcome surprise visit. But Uncle Charlie is not quite what he seems: the police want to question him about a matter back East, and then there are the expensive gifts he showers his relatives with which don't seem to belong to him... Hitchock once called this variant of the wolf-among-the-lambs parable his best American film; though he later recanted, it's hard not to think his original assessment was right. Although this film has all the cleverness and adroitness we associate with his other great films (in his repeated use of twinning motifs, and in such virtuoso sequences as young Charlie's rush to the library to discover the truth about her uncle--and the famous crane shot when she finds it), it's rare in that it has a truly superb script (credited to Thornton Wilder) that allows Hitchock's excellent cast to play real and multilayered human beings. Although there are many memorable performances in Hitchcock films, he never had another film in which every single member of the cast seems to be living up to his or her highest potential: even the two local Santa Rosa children he cast as the two youngest Newtons, Edna May Wonacott (as the surprisingly complex Anne) and Charles Bates (as little Roger), linger long in the memory. Cotton has the performance of his career as the evil and manipulative Uncle Charlie: he's so effective that initially Teresa Wright, as the younger Charlie (the only one of the Newtons to fully understand the truth about Cotton), seems greatly outmatched. But as the film continues Wright brings such steely determination to her role that you understand how this sweet young woman can successfully be an obstacle to Uncle Charlie's schemes. She's impossible to forget (especially in the way she walks down the street--shoulders hunched, hands clenched--when she runs away from the dinner table). The film's standout performance, however, is the stage actress Patricia Collinge in the great linchpin role of the mother. Collinge's Emma Newton initially seems a fluttering, silly, ordinary woman, but Collinge invests the role with so much depth of feeling that when Uncle Charlie cruelly warns young Charlie what the revelation of his identity will do to his sister, you know why the niece will not dare break her mother's heart (even at the risk of her own life). Collinge's Emma is what the film's deep and abiding humanism (so rare for a Hitchcock film!) is staked upon--she represents both what Uncle Charlie wants to destroy and what young Charlie is so desperate to save. And when Collinge makes her great, sad "forgetting you're you" speech near the film's end--where, for in the only time in her life, this sweet, self-martyring woman gives voice to what she may have given up to raise her family--, you fully understand why the stakes are so high. It's a classic performance--perhaps the single finest and richest in Hitchcock's entire corpus.
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Summary: Evil is a charming man in a small quite town.
Review: "Shadow of a Doubt" is one of my favorite of Hitchcock's early films. It often does not get the praise it deserves. Here we see the early workings of ideas and themes Hitchcock expressed better in his later work. "Shadow of a Doubt" explores the merging of good and evil to the point where it is hard to tell which is which. Like the criminals in modern times, they seduce their victims with charm and lead them to believe that they are a perfectly good human bening but behind their mask lies their true evil nature. "Shadow of a Doubt" is about an uncle who comes to visit his family in the town of Santa Rosa(Filmed in my hometown!) He seems to be a very good man but Hitchcock slowly gives us hints that he is in some kind of trouble or has done something he doesn't want his family to find out. Both of the main characters are named Charlie, Uncle Charlie who repersents evil and his niece, who repersents good. "Shadow of a Doubt" shows this struggle and how the line between both is very slim. One of Hitchcock's best and a personal favorite of his.
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Summary: entertaining suspenseful work
Review: Shadow of a Doubt keeps you entrigues by what happens. Out of no where a mysterious uncle visits his family. What does he have to bring and who is following him? Hitchock was a master of suspense and mystery, shadow of a doubt really shows why.
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Summary: When Love Turns to Terrifying Fear
Review: Alfred Hitchcock was at the top of his game with "Shadow of a Doubt," one of his all-time personal favorites. Joseph Cotten, generally accustomed to playing suave, likeable figures portrays a sociopath who hates society, and has no compunctions about killing. His targets for death are rich widows. He rationalizes that there is nothing wrong about killing them since they are spending money left to them by their deceased husbands that they do not deserve. The world is a sick, warped place to Cotten, and he sees nothing wrong in grabbing every advantage he can with no remorse. As is often the case with sociopaths such as Cotten, they can also be thoroughly charming. How else do they trap their victims? We see Cotten weave his spell over one widow, whose life was probably only ultimately spared by the end of Cotten's activities. Initially Cotten's niece, like him, also called Charlie, and played by Teresa Wright in one of her most enduring roles, sees only the charming, debonair, joyously witty side of the man she calls her "favorite uncle." When he comes west to stay for awhile with his sister and family, however, Wright little by little begins piecing together the real Uncle Charlie. He lets down his guard and tells him his warped view of human existence, which he considers hopelessly depraved. Uncle Charlie is suspected of being the "Merry Widow Killer" of wealthy widows and the manhunt results in FBI agent McDonald Carey being assigned to investigate Cotten. He is quickly taken by the charms of Ms. Wright. At first when he seeks her cooperation in learning more about her uncle, she becomes incensed, but as she learns more about him, her opposition ends and she helps Carey in his pursuit. The film ends with a brilliantly filmed train sequence which, from the standpoint of stark visual imagery, is reminiscent of the closing sequence with the merry-go-round in "Strangers on a Train." Wright finds herself confronted by a desperate Cotten, who realizes that she is the one person he must silence if he is to continue his existence of preying upon vulnerable widows and ultimately killing them.
Rating:
Summary: "Lots of tense scenes..."
Review: Lovely Teresa Wright stars as young Charlie who slowly comes to realize that her beloved uncle Charlie is really the "Merry Widow Murderer". Aparently Hitchcock's favorite film is one of his most disturbing. Cronyn is a hoot as the mystery-buff neighbor, and the script is wonderful. Lots of tense scenes and Cotten makes for a geniune menace.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Hitchcock!
Review: As devoted fan of Hitchcock's classic back and white movies, Shadow of a Doubt is my favorite. Impeccable dialouge, setting, mood, and acting combine to create an engaging thriller not-to-be-missed by fans of classic movies. Hitchcock created a very realistic world, which adds to the suspense and drama of the film; viewers can fully indentify with the "typical" young girl whose life changes forever with because of the presence of her beloved uncle. My sister and I have seen it well over a dozen times, and still enjoy it; noticing every detail.
Rating: 
Summary: Slight Disappointment
Review: I find it hard to believe that Shadow of a Doubt is even considered as Alfred Hitchcock's best film. Although he was a brilliant director, the suspense of this film is minimal while the plot can leave you uninterested. Joseph Cotton plays the beloved "Uncle Charlie", who pays a visit to his older sister and her family. Meanwhile his adoring niece is tipped off by a detective that her uncle is a serial killer. Some undeveloped references to telepathy and an unintended, yet apparent sexual chemistry between Uncle and Niece just added to the things I did not like about this film. Shadow of a Doubt may be a masterpiece to film majors, but for an average moviegoer like myself, this film is no greater than any other - and definitely nothing special.
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