![]() ![]() Teresa Wright is aglow with maiden spirit and subsequent emotional distress as the namesake of Uncle Charlie, and Patricia Collinge gives amazing flexibility and depth to the role of the patient, hard-working, sentimental mother of the house. Hitchcock has manifest completely in his naturalistic style. ![]() Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville have drawn a graphic and affectionate outline of a small-town American family which an excellent cast has brought to life and Mr. When Uncle Charlie's niece concludes quite cynically that the world is a horrible place and the young detective with whom she has romanced answers, "Some times it needs a lot of watching seems to go crazy, every now and then, like Uncle Charlie," the bathos is enough to knock you down.However, there is sufficient sheer excitement and refreshing atmosphere in the film to compensate in large measure for its few disappointing faults. ![]() We won't violate tradition to tell you how the story ends, but we will say that the moral is either anti-social or, at best, obscure. It also becomes a bit too specious in making a moralistic show of the warmth of an American community toward an unsuspected rascal in its midst. ![]() And the story seems loaded for fireworks and a beautiful explosion of surprise when the scared girl discovers that Uncle Charlie is really a murderer of rich, fat widows, wanted back East.But from that point on the story takes a decidedly anticlimactic dip and becomes just a competent exercise in keeping a tightrope taut. The atmosphere is charged with electricity when the daughter of the family, Uncle Charlie's namesake, begins to grow strangely suspicious of this moody, cryptic guest in the house. And that is the principal fault-or rather, the sole disappointment-in "Shadow of a Doubt." For this one suggests tremendous promise when a sinister character-a gentleman called Uncle Charlie-goes to visit with relatives, a typical American family, in a quiet California town. Hitchcock and/or his writers start weaving allegories in his films or, worse still, neglect to spring surprises after the ground has apparently been prepared, the consequence is something less than cheering. ![]()
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