- The Trouble with Charlie: Hell breaks loose when the devil comes to town
- Bad omen: A steam train chimney’s black smoke cloud signals his arrival
- One Good Mother: Hitch’s kindest-ever portrayal of a family matriarch
- Official releases have three different transfers: good better and best
- The film’s co-stars were reteamed as partners just a few years later
Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.
Shadow of a Doubt: Writing on a Classic | Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Soundtrack and remakes
Contents
- Production
- Home video
- The Steel Trap (1952)
- Related articles
Production
↑ 1950 Realart re-release trailer; fan, French | TCM intros
When Uncle Charlie comes to visit his relatives in the sleepy town of Santa Rosa, the Master of Suspense lays the foundation for one of his most engaging and suspense-filled excursions. Joseph Cotten stars in this understated Hitchcock thriller as a beguiling murderer who charms his unsuspecting family. But soon, his niece and namesake, “Young Charlie’’ (Teresa Wright), begins to suspect her uncle is hiding some terrible secret. Convinced by the police that he is really the Merry Widow murderer, the niece becomes the object of an increasingly deadly war of nerves as Uncle Charlie attempts to do away with the girl without arousing anyone’s suspicion. With a taut and evocative screenplay co-written by Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt is one of the few Hitchcock films ever shot on location, adding to the realistic air of this vintage thriller. – US MCA VHS (1988) and LD (1989) LDDb
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The end of innocence: Teresa Wright promo still for the film; another
Hitch initially wanted Joan Fontaine for his lead, following her hugely successful turns in Rebecca and Suspicion, but when she proved unavailable the role went to another actress also on a red hot streak but almost exactly a year younger. Teresa Wright, who turned 24 during filming, is pitch perfect as young Charlie, a recent high school graduate and by far the most perceptive member of her family, especially when it comes to the true motives of her namesake uncle. Just like Nosferatu and Dracula, it takes Girl Power to end an evil threat while the men are powerless or completely unaware. Shadow was only Wright’s fourth film and she was Oscar-nominated in her previous three: The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942) and The Pride of the Yankees (1942), winning for the latter. Enjoying a long and varied career encompassing stage, screen and TV, her other highlights included starring in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Ex-pat Irish actress Patricia Collinge plays Mrs. Newton, the matriarch of the family, and perhaps the most sympathetic, uncynical portrayal of a mother in all Hitchcockdom. She also contributed uncredited dialogue to Shadow of a Doubt and Lifeboat, and went on to appear in eight episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents/Hour. According to popular myth, when Hitch received word his mother, Emma Jane, had died back home in England on 26 September 1942, in the middle of Shadow’s August–Nov shoot, he changed Mrs. Newton’s name to Emma in her honour. But the dates don’t support this as she is already called Emma by the August 10 revision of the script.
Mother dearest: Patricia Collinge and Teresa Wright
Another common although unverifiable reading is that coming in the middle of WWII and Hitch’s run of overtly propagandist films such as Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Lifeboat and his wartime shorts, Shadow serves a similar purpose. Psychopathic Uncle Charlie represents the insidious, creeping threat of fascism or even, being a vehement orator, Hitler himself; and the film’s message is an entreaty for benign, sleeping communities to be ever vigilant and resist violently when necessary. When sharing his vision with young Charlie in his chilling speech, he’s projecting his own twisted pathology onto others to justify his misdeeds.
FT: In the first scene at the station, when the train carrying Uncle Charlie is coming in, there’s a heavy cloud of black smoke coming out of the engine’s smokestack, and as the train comes close, it darkens the whole station. I have the feeling that this was done deliberately because when the train is leaving the station, at the end of the picture, there’s simply a small
puff of light smoke.
AH: That’s right; I asked for lots of black smoke for the first scene. It’s one of those ideas for which you go to a lot of trouble, although it’s seldom noticed. But here, we were lucky. The position of the sun created a beautiful shadow over the whole station.
FT: The black smoke implies that the devil was coming to town.
AH: Exactly. There’s a similar detail in The Birds when Jessica Tandy, in a state of shock after having discovered the farmer’s body, takes off in her car. To sustain that emotion, I had them put smoke in the truck’s exhaust and we also made the road dusty. It also served to establish a contrast with the peaceful mood of her arrival at the farm. For that scene we had the
road slightly dampened and there was no smoke coming out of the truck. – Hitchcock/Truffaut
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In vampiric, funereal repose: Uncle Charlie, looking for all the world like a black-winged Count Orlok or Dracula lying in his ‘coffin’ (alt), is not averse to bumping off non-wealthy women when it suits him.
- Footsteps in the Fog: AH’s San Francisco/website (2002) – Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal
- H’s Diegetic Imagination: Shadow of a Doubt/alt (2015) – Donna Kornhaber
- The Girl Who Knew Too Much: Shadow of a Doubt/Pt 1/2 (2015) – Elaine Lennon
As the film was originally released during WWII, most countries actually in the theatre of conflict didn’t see it until after the war, so it bypassed German cinemas altogether. However, fascinatingly, some Allied PoWs in German camps got to see it in 1944 when it was included in an initial consignment of non-political films swapped between the Allied and Axis powers. Eventually, it was finally shown on national German TV with a specially recorded 1968 dub (alt), now present on the German discs. Incidentally, there are up to three full or partially redone French dubs (alt), with the first recorded on its release in 1945, as was also the case with Italy.
- Shadow of a Doubt (2021) – Diane Negra
- Cosmic Time in Shadow of a Doubt – Matthew Moore, Watching CT: Suspense Films of Hitchcock, Welles, and Reed (2022)
This 1958 Italian re-release poster (alt) by Franco Picchioni takes such liberties with the film as to render it unrecognisable. Looking like a florid spy thriller, it might have passed muster for Foreign Correspondent but looks even better suited for the sexed-up international espionage films popular from the 1960s onwards.
Guillermo del Toro: TIFF masterclass | website | report
Preserved transfer
US reissue DVD; not remastered, despite the strapline
- US/Canada: DVD (reissued 2006)
- UK: DVD (reissued 2005)
- Italy: DVD/alt (reissued 2015)
- Germany: DVD (reissued 2006)
- France: DVD (reissued 2006/2007, 2012, 2017)
- Spain: DVD/alt (reissued 2013)
Quite fittingly for Hitch’s favourite of his own films, Universal got this one right straight off the bat as its preserved transfer, which first appeared on DVD everywhere in 2001, is very good with only occasional signs of minor wear and vertical scratches. All discs are exactly the same, apart from regional sub and dub variations.
Spanish reissue DVD (rear)
Remastered transfer
For its 2013 appearance on BDs everywhere, the previous element was remastered in HD with minimal clean-up; nonetheless it improves in all the expected areas: detail, grain, more information in the frame, audio fidelity, etc. As with the DVDs, apart from language options all discs and extras are the same and have been much-reissued everywhere.
Restored transfer
US set (rear)
- Prime Video HD | YouTube
- US: UHD-BD/BD
- Canada: UHD-BD/BD
- UK: BFI Player
- France: UHD-BD/BD
- Scandinavia: UHD-BD/BD
For its 2022 appearance on UHD-BD, Shadow was restored in 4k with an extensive clean-up, so is now even more detailed and virtually spotless, with all new discs carrying over the previous extras. As good as the previous transfers are, it’s now easy to see that Universal were fairly liberal with grain (and detail) removal before; thankfully they’re now taking a much more hands-off approach and the results look absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the image is a little darker overall, losing some shadow detail, and the over-filtered audio is a step down from both previous formats. These are the only individual releases; most countries have it in a box set and some also include the previous BDs.
Summary
All discs feature the same extras, first produced for DVD: “Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock’s Favorite Film” (2000, 35min); two photo galleries and the 1950 re-release trailer above. The BDs also have a “Universal 100th Anniversary” promo on startup. Once again, despite seeing frequent repackages and reissues, each country has only ever had one pressing of each disc; all others are exactly the same. There are many comparative screenshots courtesy of the invaluable Hitchcock Zone, Caps-a-holic and below.
- Wright: BD | 4k BD
- Travers: BD | 4k BD
- Wright #2: BD | 4k BD
- Wright/Cotten: BD | 4k BD
- Cotten: R1 DVD | 4k BD
- Cotten #2: BD | 4k BD
- Travers #2: BD | 4k BD
- Cotten #3: R1 DVD | 4k BD
- Wright #3: BD | 4k BD
- Wright #4: BD | 4k BD
- Report: BD | 4k BD
- Wright #5: BD | 4k BD
- Wright #6: BD | 4k BD
If you’ve ploughed your way through this entire series of guides chronologically, you’ll be well aware this is the first American Hitchcock feature, his 29th film overall – or 32nd, depending on how you count them – that has no home video issues whatsoever. That means no missing footage or post-release censorship, wrong aspect ratios, different edits or weak and strong transfers scattered among different releases, revisionist audio remixing, varying quantities of extras, etc. If all of the Master’s films were this simple, you could just buy with impunity and there would be little need for these articles. But don’t worry: (ab)normal service will be resumed with the very next one and most thereafter.
Bootleg DVDs are anything not on Universal, eg from the US (Big D Films, Triad), Germany (FNM, also 2on1 w/To Catch a Thief), Brazil (Classicline), Chile (Cinematekka/box), South Korea (Cine Korea, Cleo Entertainment), etc.
Now Showing: worldwide screenings
The Steel Trap (1952)
A tense nail-biter with the stars of Shadow of a Doubt.
Thrillmaster Andrew Stone re-teams Shadow of a Doubt’s Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright for this bank job drama about a man who goes all out for the big score, only to discover he’s risked losing all. Diligent, observant and bright assistant bank manager James Osborne (Cotten) knows all the ins and outs of his bank – including a few loopholes wary upper management has missed. Despairing of the suburban treadmill, Osborne seizes on U.S.-Brazil extradition (or lack thereof) to provide his “get out of jail free card.”
His daring plan – rob the bank during working hours on Friday and be safely in Brazil by the time the cash is found missing Monday morn. Unfortunately, Osborne’s wife Laurie (Wright) does not applaud his daring as imagined. She leaves him and, in order to get her back, Osborne must now enact an even more daring plan – break back into the bank and return the purloined tender before Monday morning. – US Warner DVD-R (2012)
- US: Warner DVD-R (2012) – region 0
- Lux Radio Theatre, September 14, 1953 – Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright
Wright and Cotten, who was 13 years her senior, were teamed twice more on screen, firstly as husband and wife in this excellent noir thriller which is, like Shadow of a Doubt, based on an original script, scored by Dimitri Tiomkin and available on home video. They also reprised their performances for its radio adaptation. Last was in the comedy “The Edge of Innocence”, a 1957 episode of feature-length TV anthology series Playhouse 90 which, despite featuring a host of talent throughout its run, sadly remains officially unreleased.
Shadow of a Doubt: Writing on a Classic | Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Soundtrack and remakes
Related articles
This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.
