SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) B/W 108m

w/Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Patricia Collinge, Henry Travers, Hume Cronyn

Gripping suspense film in the grand Hitchcock tradition. A niece (Wright) suspects her uncle (Cotten) of having a deep, dark secret. This thriller, the director's personal favorite of all his films, beautifully captures the small town WWII atmosphere. (Exteriors were filmed in Santa Rosa, California, which is the same part of the country Hitchcock returned to for VERTIGO and THE BIRDS). Screenplay co-written by Thornton Wilder, with Sally Benson and Alma Reville (Hitchcock's wife), from an original story by Gordon McDonnell. Uniformly good performances.

From The Movie Guide: "This is Hitchcock's most penetrating analysis of a murderer --- a masterful profile, aided by Cotten's superb performance, of a subtle killer who cannot escape his dark passions, despite a superior intellect. The film's construction is adroit and perfectly calculated, letting the viewer know early on just what kind of a man Cotten really is, but providing tension through Cotten's devious charade as a gentle, kind man deserving of his family's love --- a tension which fuels the chilling cat-and-mouse game between Cotten and Wright that provides the film's suspenseful center.

"Hitchcock took his time in making SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and the care shows. The director got Thornton Wilder to write the screenplay, assuming that the playwright who created 'Our Town' would be the perfect scenarist to bring the right kind of ambiance and characterization to the film's small, close-knit Santa Rosa. After consulting briefly with Hitchcock, Wilder wandered about Hollywood with a notebook, writing bits and pieces of the screenplay when he could. He and the director took their time developing the inticate story, and Wilder had not finished the screenplay when he enlisted to serve in the Psychological Warfare Division of the Army. To finish the script, Hitchcock boarded a cross-country train to Florida (where Wilder was to begin his training) with the writer, and patiently sat in the next compartment as Wilder periodically emerged to give him another few pages of copy. The great playwright finished the last page of SHADOW OF A DOUBT just as the train was coming to his stop, and he used the train upon which he and Hitchcock traveled as his model in creating the setting for the gripping finale."

Oscar nomination for Best Original Story (McDonnell).