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Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

BOTTOM LINE:

Only very few directors are lucky enough to have made the perfect film. Alfred Hitchcock, the cinema’s greatest director, made seven. Seven perfect films in which every shot, every camera move, and every editing sequence is, well, perfect. “Shadow of a Doubt” is the second of these. Three years earlier, “Rebecca” came within a hair’s breadth of suffering from producer interference.

POST TITLE: Hitchcock made seven perfect films

Screenplay by: Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville based on an idea/story by Gordon McDonell

Cinematography: Joseph Valentine

Edited by: Milton Caruth

Original Score: Dimitri Tiomkin (The Merry Widow Waltz by Franz Lehar)

Distributed by: Universal Pictures

Starring: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, MacDonald Carey, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, and Henry Travers.

Hitchcock’s cameo: 0:16:27. On the train to Santa Rosa, playing cards, his back to the camera, he has a full hand of spades. Also note that as the forties became the fifties, Hitchcock’s famous cameo appearance occurred earlier in the movie so as not to distract the viewer.

PLOT: Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) visits his relatives in Santa Rosa. He is a very charming man, but his niece (Theresa Wright – also named Charlie in his honor) slowly realizes that he is wanted for murder, and he soon recognizes her suspicions. Although one of the suspected murderers is killed and the case is considered closed, she still has her suspicions.

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