alfred hitchcock bringing murder home shadow of doubt

To Charlie, the repetitive toils of family are a shroud hiding the banality of existence. Charlie’s younger sister, Ann (Edna May Wonacott), spends every waking moment buried in books and discovering the secret lives of Ivanhoe or Dracula. Her father Joseph (Henry Travers) absent-mindedly works the 9 to 5 at the local bank while fragile mother Emma (Patricia Collinge) plays happy homemaker to her family and fusses about the latest Women’s Club meeting. Growing up in the most idyllic of small American towns, the kind where the introverted neighbor comes over every evening after dinner, she’s bored with life. Technically named Charlotte, Charlie is a precocious adolescent who is yearning for her life to start. The first is Charlie Newton of Santa Rosa, California. The movie is the deceptively simple story of two Charlies.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943), produced at the height of the Second World War, remains the Hitchcock’s most sincere and enduring love letter to all things Americana, including the sand upon which it is built. For whatever else Stoker is, it is a reimagining of one of the most fascinating and underappreciated works in the Master’s catalogue.

Often described as a Korean Hitchcock, Chan-wook embraces these comparisons head on in a Hollywood production that looks for inspiration and guidance from the larger than life Englishman in a dark suit. Last week, Park Chan-wook’s first English language feature, Stoker, enjoyed its Blu-ray/DVD release. For every generation, there is almost something mythical and romantically innocent about times long gone by. Increasingly as a culture, Americans tend to look back on the past with the misty-eyed Instagram effect of nostalgia.

Alfred hitchcock bringing murder home shadow of doubt