Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/
This was a nice little number.
I really enjoyed this one - so far Hitchcock has only one miss on my tally - Saboteur. Everything else I've seen has been great. This one has a pitch-perfect performance by Joseph Cotten - he really sells the movie. He's friendly and sinister at the same time, and moves between the modes flawlessly.
I really liked the film-noir cinematography in this movie. The use of shadows was stunning, and the camera movements were also very nice. It lends itself to the intimate character interactions very well.
Speaking of the characters, they were also pretty well done. This film is pretty down to earth as Hitchcock films go, as it revolves around a family in their natural habitat. It doesn't get outlandish like some of Hitch's films (not that that's neccesarily a bad thing), and it makes the tension that much higher because of the close proximity of all the characters.
This film was also darkly funny on several occaisons. Herbie's remark that it would look kind of silly if someone killed themselves by hitting themself in the head with a lead pipe cracked me up. Some of the lines were delivered in such a deadpan manner it was hard not to laugh.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say the only things I didn't really like were the romance subplot (it would have been fine worked if it was given more development, but as it stands it wasn't really neccesary) and a little bit of the dialogue - there were some 'hurr patriotism' lines, but they were forgiveable because it was still wartime, most of them were spoken by a child, and there weren't nearly as many of them as there were in Saboteur.
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/
This was a nice little number.
I really enjoyed this one - so far Hitchcock has only one miss on my tally - Saboteur. Everything else I've seen has been great. This one has a pitch-perfect performance by Joseph Cotten - he really sells the movie. He's friendly and sinister at the same time, and moves between the modes flawlessly.
I really liked the film-noir cinematography in this movie. The use of shadows was stunning, and the camera movements were also very nice. It lends itself to the intimate character interactions very well.
Speaking of the characters, they were also pretty well done. This film is pretty down to earth as Hitchcock films go, as it revolves around a family in their natural habitat. It doesn't get outlandish like some of Hitch's films (not that that's neccesarily a bad thing), and it makes the tension that much higher because of the close proximity of all the characters.
This film was also darkly funny on several occaisons. Herbie's remark that it would look kind of silly if someone killed themselves by hitting themself in the head with a lead pipe cracked me up. Some of the lines were delivered in such a deadpan manner it was hard not to laugh.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say the only things I didn't really like were the romance subplot (it would have been fine worked if it was given more development, but as it stands it wasn't really neccesary) and a little bit of the dialogue - there were some 'hurr patriotism' lines, but they were forgiveable because it was still wartime, most of them were spoken by a child, and there weren't nearly as many of them as there were in Saboteur.
posted by will at
1:54 AM
