Niece Charlie brings to the exchange a clear admiration she has had for him since youth. When her Uncle Charlie arrives, niece Charlie, elated, greets him as if they were each ten years younger. Soon, however, she will catch up, and learn the murderous truth behind his reasons for the visit.Ī psychological thriller and gem of film noir, Shadow of a Doubt functions as a dark coming-of-age tale. When she arrives at the telegram office, she finds that her uncle, as he will be for most of the film, is already one thought ahead. Frustrated by the banalities of everyday suburbia, she hopes that a visit from her beloved uncle will provide a welcome jolt to family life. On the same day he sends a telegram warning his sister of his arrival, niece Charlie gets the same idea. To evade whatever trouble he has gotten himself in, he decides to journey west, to his sister’s home in Santa Rosa, California. The film begins with the handsome man lying in bed, the first of many commonalities between these inter-generational Charlies.

Soon, she will find the previously untroubled comforts of suburban life upended when a beloved family member comes to town.įamously Hitchock’s favorite of his films, Shadow of a Doubt stars Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie, the man from whom Wright’s character gets her name.

Charlie is at that very specific age, a budding adult with childhood completely in the rearview mirror and the unvarnished facts of life ahead. She is stuck not only in her thoughts, but in a transitory period of life. When we first meet Charlie Newton, the young woman played by Teresa Wright in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt, she is lying in bed, thinking.

I know without a shadow of a doubt