Shadow of a Doubt

Saw Shadow of a Doubt, my last Hitchcock for a while. It was very cozy for a Hitchcock film. Usually he deals with grandiloquent, rich cops and robbers who are very fun to watch but not very identifiable as people. This one takes place mainly in a sleepy suburb with a boy, two girls and somnambulist parents. The children shout and talk over each other, the parents smile and shake their heads. It's a simplified and cliche snapshot of a family that wouldn't be far out of place in a John Hughes film. Very cozy.

The eldest daughter, Charlie, seeking some excitement, calls up her namesake uncle (uncle Charlie) who we see is a criminal of some sort. She's creepily introduced to the uncle via a soft-focus lens (usually the cinema short-hand for true love) and soon reveals a repressed but intense attachment to him. For his part, the uncle showers her with gifts but is clearly desperately on the run. Soon some feds come snooping around and the daughter Charlie gets involved and their relationship kind of sours. Now the purpose of the sleepy suburb is revealed. What was once cozy is now claustrophobic. What was paternal becomes patronizing. An appropriate giddy and intense climax finishes off the film.

Of note is the strange justification the uncle gives for his crimes. He victimizes the rich and idle, calling them fat animals, drinking and eating up their lives and the lives of others. This sense of (almost) idealism is echoed in the daughter Charlie: before his arrival she is crankily carping about how Mother always has to do all the housework and nothing's ever going to change. I find it odd that the two Charlies are connected via these different forms of idealism and that feminism is semi-equated with murderous redistribution of wealth (which is an element anyway of communism, the redistribution bit that is.) I think these scary ideas were threatening to audiences of the time, particularly the sort of audience who would go to a crime thriller, a genre notorious for their perfectly ordered worlds and black-n-white morality.

Also, there's an ongoing joke where the father of the family is constantly plotting the prefect murder. He amateurishly plays at what the uncle does for a living!

Edit: also, there's a ton of vampire references that were too subtle for me. Good call, imdb trivia.