cast of characters alfred hitchcock shadow of doubt

One of the things I liked about Saboteur, the previous film in my Hitchcock journey, was how large the adventure felt. I know that sounds like blasphemy, criticizing the master of suspense but I said it and I’m sticking to it. If Hitchcock would have maintained the suspense of if Charlie was or wasn’t the murderer until the very end, I think that would have made the movie even more suspenseful.

I f there is one flaw I would say Shadow of a Doubt has is that it made the revelation too early. The film does an excellent job of slowly unraveling the character while at the same time keeping an air of mystery around him. In the beginning, you have no idea of who Uncle Charlie really is. It brought a sense of levity to an otherwise generally serious tone of the film. The friendly banter the two of them had throughout the film was funny and entertaining. And not only are these two great individually but they are also marvelous together.īesides Cotton and Wright, there was an unexpectedly fun pairing of young Charlie’s father, Joseph, played by Henry Travers, and Joe’s best friend Herbie, played by Hume Cronyn. In the same way Cotton slowly descends into a darker character, Wright has a similar transformation, from naive child to realizing a hard truth about her uncle. Teresa Wright, whose character is named after her Uncle Charlie, begins the film full of excitement and youthful energy when her uncle first arrives to visit.

Cotton’s descent into this darker persona is chilling and wonderfully executed. As the film progresses, we slowly see the dark side of his character, Charlie Oakley. Now in Shadow of a Doubt it’s Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. In Saboteur it was Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane.

I know I’m only two films into my journey but an early trend I am seeing is Hitchcock had a knack for casting a fantastic leading pair. Good thing to because Shadow of a Doubt is way more suspenseful if you don’t know what is going to happen in the film. I have been going into these films with as little knowledge beforehand as possible. Hitchcock has said that this is his favorite film, so that is some high praise coming from the director himself! Of course, I didn’t know that when I started the film. Next up in my journey through my Alfred Hitchcock collection is Shadow of a Doubt. Charlie (Teresa Wright) gets suspicious that her uncle (Joseph Cotton) might be a murderer.

Cast of characters alfred hitchcock shadow of doubt