SHADOW OF A DOUBT
A film by Alfred
Hitchcock
1943/ USA/ 108 min
13th Dec, 2015;
5.45pm; Perks Mini Theater
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in
Screening starts
exactly at 5.45 pm with a documentary on Hitchcock
Shadow of a Doubt is a disturbing and relentlessly modern
look at the corruption of small town American life. In an era when the movies
all but had to portray only positive images of this country, Alfred Hitchcock
was testing the limits of decency and morality as defined by Hollywood’s Production
Code. Hitchcock takes the all-American family and introduces malice so true it
consumes.
The horror is, of course, Uncle Charlie. He visits his
sister and her family in Santa Rosa, California, and develops a strange
relationship with his niece, Charlotte, affectionately referred to as Charlie
in honor of her uncle. She soon suspects her Uncle Charlie of being the Merry
Widow murderer and is plunged into turmoil over her family obligations and the
vulgarity of his acts.
When we’re first introduced to the Newton family, it’s a
kind of clichéd look at bucolic family life. Everybody is nice and genteel and
pleasant. This might appear dated when we, less as Americans and more as human
begins, know that this isn’t the reality of daily life. But the light atmosphere
Hitchcock cultivates in the film’s early scenes heightens the dark aspects of
the story to follow, dark like the column of smoke snaking behind Uncle
Charlie’s train.
Ultimately, Shadow of a Doubt remains one of Hitchcock’s
best movies because it is a clear example of the director’s sense of the world.
From out of the censored studio era, it’s refreshing that an artist could
commit to celluloid a personal, cynical voice. Nothing, it seems, is as it
should be in a Hitchcock film. While his films are certainly nail biters, the
reason Hitchcock was so great was because he understood the human condition and
its flaws. (Source: Internet)
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock is known to his audiences as the 'Master of
Suspense' and what Hitchcock mastered was not only the art of making films but
also the task of taming his own raging imagination. Director of such works as
Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and The 39 steps, Hitchcock told his stories through
intelligent plots witty dialogue and a spoonful of mystery and murder. In doing
so, he inspired a new generation of filmmakers and revolutionized the thriller
genre, making him a legend around the world. His brilliance was sometimes too
bright: He was hated as well as loved, oversimplified as well as over analyzed.
Hitchcock was eccentric, demanding, inventive, impassioned and he had a great
sense of British humor.
His success followed when he made a number of films in
Britain such as "The Lady Vanishes" (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939),
some of them which also made him famous in the USA. David O. Selznick, an
American producer at the time, got in touch with Hitchcock and the Hitchcock
family moved to the USA to direct an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca
(1940). It was when Saboteur (1942) was made, that films companies began to
call his films after him; such as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock's
Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.He retired soon after making Family Plot
(1976).In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock.
On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep
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