She is helplessly negative about her family and her life, a mood she only shakes when she learns that her beloved uncle is coming to town. We first see her lying in bed in the same position Uncle Charlie assumes when we first meet him. The true chill of the scenario is that Young Charlie isn’t much different. Uncle Charlie is simply the X factor, the unquantifiable evil. A childhood head injury is supposed to explain him, but we can almost hear Hitchcock chortling icily during that particular exposition. The small-town community of Santa Rosa, California, where everyone knows each other, is built to be blown apart by an unknowable monster like Uncle Charlie. Louis) and subject them to the astringent sensibility of Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, whose name is also on the script. It’s what happens when you take credited co-writers Thornton Wilder (whose gravestone work was Our Town) and Sally Hanson ( Meet Me in St.

Shadow of a Doubt, made and released during wartime, might also be called The Murderer Is Among Us, the working title of Fritz Lang’s M. For a good deal of the film’s running time, we worry more about Uncle Charlie’s influence on Young Charlie than about any physical threat he might pose. He represents what she might grow (or wither) into.

Young Charlie looks up to Uncle Charlie, might even have a bit of a thing for him. It’s impossible to tell what he might be thinking, since only his right ear is really visible, but she seems both frightened and compelled. The dark profile of the amiable but vicious “Uncle” Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) threatens to block out the face of his niece and namesake, “Young Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright). This cover, like the film, derives its power from its stark simplicity. There’s a 2006 DVD edition of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt whose cover art better expresses the film’s mood and menace than any poster I’ve seen for the movie.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) cover