shadow of a doubt is hitchcocks best movie

Unhappily married Guy laughs off the proposition from charming waster Bruno, but it turns out that Bruno (a terrific Robert Walker) is a psychopath and when he duly murders Guy’s wife – in a stunning scene the victim’s strangulation is reflected in her glasses – Guy is expected to return the favour by murdering Bruno’s father.

Hitchcock, aided by a screenplay from Thornton Wilder, masterfully exposes the dark underbelly of small town America in a film often cited as his own personal favouriteĪ chance encounter on a train between two men results in one of them suggesting that the two swap murders – each will kill someone for the other to ensure that neither is suspected. Gradually, however, she realises that all is not what it seems and that her beloved uncle is a serial killer of women. Joseph Cotten excels as prodigal uncle Charlie who is hero worshipped by his niece, also Charlie (Teresa Wright), in this noir-ish slice of Americana with a bitter aftertaste. Selznick took the Oscar for best film, but Hitchcock lost best director to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath. Despite this, Rebecca is unmistakably a Hitchcock picture, a typically deft psychological thriller showing he was the right choice to bring Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic melodrama to the screen. Hitchcock was forced to cede to producer David O Selznick for his first US movie and as such, Rebecca has Selznick’s fingerprints all over it. Hitchcock managed to fit in plenty of observations on human nature with even those passengers not involved in the kidnapping lying about their knowledge of Miss Froy for their own selfish reasons, such as the cricket-loving silly Englishmen who are anxious to get home for a test match. Only a young woman admits to having seen her and she enlists a young Englishman to help her find said lady, who it later transpires is a British spy.

On a transcontinental train in a ficticious central European country, the elderly Miss Froy suddenly disappears. Hitchcock later called it a grave error and bad technique to allow the bomb to go off because it killed the suspense, but the scene was undeniably powerful and was required in the context of the film.īookending Hitchcock’s golden English period is this celebrated blend of comedy and suspense that some interpreted as a comment on appeasement as the Second World War loomed. One of Hitchcock’s darkest dramas, this compelling version of Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent about a terrorist cell in London is most famous for the incredibly suspenseful and horrific sequence when a bomb-laden package explodes on board a packed bus.

Shadow of a doubt is hitchcocks best movie