Uncle Charlie And Young Charlie example essay topic

Shadow of a Doubt Shadow of a Doubt is an Alfred Hitchcock film that was shot on location in the 1940's town of Santa Rosa, California. The town itself is representative of the ideal of American society. However, hidden within this picturesque community dark corruption threatens to engulf a family. The tale revolves around Uncle Charlie, a psychotic killer whose namesake niece, a teenager girl named Charlie, is emotionally thrilled by her Uncles arrival. However her opinion slowly changes as she probes into her mysterious uncle. In the film, director / producer Alfred Hitchcock blends conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values.

In the beginning the film is immediately set up in the film noir style. Under the opening credits a shadowy back round image is shown kaleidoscopically. Couples dressed in elegant ballroom gowns and suits waltz together dizzying ly as the 'Merry Widow Waltz' plays. The scene has nothing to do with the drama to follow (until Charlie's crimes are revealed.) The titles dissolve in to a panoramic view of a bridge, further dissolves take us first to junkyard and then to a scene of children playing in the street. The city is shown as a dirty, dark place. We are taken to a Philadelphia rooming house (shown with a number 13 on the door.) Inside we are introduced to 'Uncle Charlie' (Joseph Cotten).

He is reclining stiffly in bed during the day in a seedy room... He plays with the phallic cigar that he is smoking, seemingly bitter and cynical. On the bedside table next to seemingly indifferent and fatigued man is and an open billfold with a carelessly strewn pile of bills on top (some of the bills have fallen to the floor and lie strewn around). The overweight, middle-aged landlady knocks on the door and enters, identifying him as Mr. Spencer and informing him that two men have been asking for him. As per his instructions to not disturb him, she didn't let them in, however, they have not left, instead they retreated to the street corner to stake out the boarding house.

Noticing that he looks exhausted and depressed (he passively remains on his bed during their entire conversation), she suggests that he should get some rest. Then she notices his money cluttered all about and hurries forward to straighten it up and scolds him to be more careful with his belongings. Although all indications reveal her boarder's underworld connections, she naively ignores them. To allow him to continue his nap, the landlady lowers the blind before leaving and its shadow is drawn down over Charlie's face. Rather than inducing sleep, the darkness causes him to sit up alertly.

Charlie snuffs out his cigar, finishes his drink, rises and angrily hurls his glass against floor. He raises the blind and observes the two visitors waiting outside for him and speaks: 'What do you know? You " re bluffing. You " ve nothing on me. ' Charles leaves the room, and intentionally walks toward and past the two men as a challenge.

They ignore him, but chase after their suspect (filmed from high above) in a desolate, abandoned lot, quickly losing his track and appearing astonished by his abrupt disappearance. The camera turns up and to the left, discovering the cigar-smoking character in profile on a rooftop. From a cinematography point of view this is the most Film Noir portion of the film. In a dark and dirty setting it introduces us to the good guys and the bad guy, culminating in a chase scene. We dissolve to see Charles in a dingy poolroom talking on a telephone.

He is sending a telegram to his sister in Santa Rosa, California. He has invited himself to take sanctuary there and will arrive on Thursday. Santa Rosa, California is introduced as Charlie repeats the words 'Santa Rosa, California' to the operator - we are shown a beautiful, sunny and clean, traditional town with tree-lined streets with no children playing on them. A smiling traffic policeman directs downtown traffic in an orderly fashion.

A series of dissolves lead from outside the Newton family home into the upstairs bedroom of 'Young' Charlie (Teresa Wright), paralleling her introduction with the one of her Uncle in the rooming house - to stress their close affinity and link to each other. Charlie is lying fully dressed in a very similar position on her bed as her Uncle Charlie in the first scene, meditating or deep in thought - her arms cradling her head on a pillow. In his article Ideology, Genre, Auteur (Hitchococh's Films Revisited, 1988, Columbia University Press, pigs. 288-302) Robin Wood argues that this image is part of the incest theme that runs through the film. The ringing of the downstairs telephone introduces Charlie's younger, bookworm ish, precocious, and bespectacled sister Ann (Edna May Wonacott) with her nose buried in Ivanhoe. She answers the phone call from Mrs. Henderson at the Postal Union office, but doesn't write down the message for lack of a pencil, explaining: 'I'm trying to keep my mind free of things that don't matter because I have so much to keep on my mind - innumerable things.

' She promises to tell her mother to call back. Her father, Joseph Newton (Henry Travers) arrives home from work. Anne teasingly compares her own dignified and sophisticated literature choices with the pulp mysteries that her elderly father reads: Ann: Here I am, practically a child, and I wouldn't read the things you read. Father: Well, I guess they'd give ya bad dreams. Ann: Bad dreams? You don't understand, Papa Here we see an excellent example of the contrast that the film sets up.

The family as the audience sees it at this point could have been picked right off the set of early situational comedies like Leave it to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show. We have the young girl dazing dreamily off to space on an afternoon; her sister Anne offers easy comic relief, as the young 'know-it-all'; and the pleasant father who always has time for his children. Often in comedy (especially early American Situational comedy based in a small town) there is a problem that needs to be resolved. Here, the stage is set for our first problem. Upstairs, we learn that Charlie is not so happy, she has been lying 'thinking for hours,' psychologically restless and despairing to her calm, bank-teller father of her family's entrapment in a passion-less, middle-class life where 'nothing happens'. In particular, she grieves the fate of her unfulfilled, hard-working mother and wishes 'to do something for her.

' Charlie feels that her family needs a 'miracle' to rescue it because it has 'gone to pieces. ' Often in the plot of a situational comedy, the child or teenager experienced some sort of lightly depicted minor dilemma (a lost sweater, or lying to a pen pal) which the parent then neatly dispatched of with some well-pointed words of advice near the end of the episode. The child learned the moral lesson, only to be confronted with a new predicament the following week. Soon after this conversation and after he arrival of Charlie's Mother Emma (Patricia Collings), Charlie has thought of a method of salvation, she shall telegram Uncle Charlie to come for a visit. Meanwhile, Charlie's younger brother Roger (Charles Bates) has burst through the front door, sharing his mathematical obsession with measuring distances by his footsteps.

Again the comic relief, Anne criticises her mother's mis-use of the telephone (and doubting of advanced technology) when she calls for the telegram's message: 'You'd think Mama had never seen a phone. She makes no allowance for science. She thinks she has to cover the distance by sheer lung power. ' (Both of these occurrences further the similarities to situational comedy, using scenes from imagined small town nuclear family everyday life.) When Emma is finally told that her younger brother Charles is coming into town on Thursday, she joyfully calls it 'the most wonderful surprise. ' However, she realise's something abnormal about the way her daughter had coincidentally foreseen his arrival: 'Now what made her think to do that at the same time?' In the Postal Union Office, Charlie is told about her mother's wire from her Uncle Charlie, she also reacts with delight to what she believes is the certain consequence of her 'mental telepathy' drew him to their home. Hence, we have the end to our first dilemma, like a good situational comedy, the Young Charlie's problem was introduced, discussed, and dealt with, everything is right with the world.

Or is it? In the interior of the train to Santa Rosa, the black railroad porter speaks to Charles (now known as Mr. Otis) in a compartment, unseen behind a black curtain. He is supposedly 'very sick. ' In another compartment nearby, an elderly couple are playing cards with a man whose back is to the camera (Hitchcock in his customary cameo appearance.) After a dissolve, the Newton's car (with the entire family inside except for Emma) pulls into the Santa Rosa train station as Charles' train arrives. Black smoke pours into the sky and a dark shadow is cast over everything to symbolize the arrival of evil in the clean and bright California town. As the train departs, Charles stands up straighter, miraculously recovers his health, and smiles while walking towards Charlie - they both approach each other in similar fashions and meet to embrace.

Immediately, she perceives that he isn't a sick man: 'At first I didn't know you. I thought you were sick. You aren't sick, are you? Why, Uncle Charlie, you " re not sick. That was the funniest thing. ' The rest of the family greets Uncle Charlie and marches toward the car with his luggage - the snug uncle follows behind and takes out one of his cigars.

Because Young Charlie desired it, Joe offers Charlie's room at the head of the stairs to Uncle Charlie: 'Emm ie wanted to move Anne but Charlie thought you'd be more comfortable here. ' His cane and coat are thrown on the bed, but Joe cautions him about tossing his hat there - another instance of superstition in the film: Joe: Ah, ah, ah, don't put the hat on the bed. Uncle Charles: Superstitious, Joe? Joe: No, but I don't believe in inviting trouble. A few moments later when alone, Charles looks at a wall photograph of Charlie's high school graduation, picks a rose and places it in his lapel. He looks out of the window on the onto the pleasant street, and then intentionally violates the head of the household's warning and tosses his hat onto Charlie's bed to proclaim his arrival and stake out his territory.

At the dinner table a short while later Uncle Charles gives Charlie a foreboding gift of a ring even though see protests it. Robin Wood states that:' there is the business with the ring, which not only, as a symbolic token of engagement, links Charlie sexually with her uncle, but also links her, through its previous ownership, to his succession of merry widows. ' Also important during this scene is the fact that Charlie receives what will be her most important clue as to her Uncle's identity. The engraved initials in the ring are important evidence against him. It is almost as if he is at once courting Young Charlie and daring her to guess the truth about her uncle. Further along into the movie we are bounced back and forth between scenes that resemble a comedy and that build our suspense.

For example, after diner on the first day of Charlie's arrival we are introduced to Joe's friend Herb. Joe and Herb share an addiction to crime stories and playfully talk about how best to murder each other. It is easily identifiable to the audience that the two are 'just playing' here and that there is no danger involved. The discussion even becomes quite humorous: Joe: ... Listen, if I wanted to murder you tomorrow, do you think I'd waste my time on fancy hypodermics? Or on In ni?

... Indian arrow-poison. Listen, I'd find out if you were alone, walk in, hit you on the head with a piece of lead pipe or a loaded cane... Herb: What would be the fun of that? Where's your planning? Where's your clues?

Joe: I don't want any clues. I want to murder you. What do I want with clues? Herb: Well, if you haven't got any clues, where's your book? Joe: I'm not talk in' about writ in' books. I'm talk in' about killing you!

Herb: Well, if I was gonna kill you, I wouldn't do a dumb thing like hitting you on the head. First of all, I don't like the fingerprint angle. Of course, I could always wear gloves. Press your hands against the pipe after you were dead and make you look like a suicide.

Except it don't seem hardly likely that you'd beat yourself to death with a club. I'd murder you so it didn't look like murder. The scene reduces the idea of murder to the subject of stories and fantasy (for such a thing could never happen here, in such a nice domestic town.) However, following this is a scene full of suspense as Uncle Charlie discovers a newspaper article about the search for the 'Merry Widow' murderer. We follow his elaborate scheme to hide the article and fear for the inquisitive little Ann. Young Charlie however, discovers her Uncle deception and is thus given her second major clue into her Uncle's perverse activities. As we get further and further into the movie the lines between small town domestic comedy and film noir become blurred as the Uncle Charlie brings more evil into the town of Santa Rosa.

It starts with the arrival of Uncle Charlie at Joe's bank. While making a deposit of the enormous sum of $40,000 Charlie meets the rich widow Mrs. Potter, who we later guess will be his next victim. The arrival of Uncle Charlie's pursuers into the picturesque little town brings us fully back into film noir territory, while the film is shot in this beautiful setting we now have two sets of hunter and prey suspense fully circling each other. The detective and Uncle Charlie, as well as Uncle Charlie and his potential victims Mrs. Potter and Young Charlie. It would seem that Hitchcock has gone out of his way to introduce many sets of doubles into the film. First we have the obvious one that is the subject of this paper, the combination of the two styles, film noir and small town comedy.

There are some other obvious examples: the two Charlies; the two detectives; and the two murder suspects. However, there are some not so obvious doubles as well: the two Americas (the 'beautiful world' and Uncle Charlie's 'nasty, ugly' world); the two conversations about murder techniques; the two sets of hunter and prey discussed above; the 'Til Two bar where Charlie orders a double brandy; Charlie's two school friends; the two unsuccessful attempts on Charlie's life; the two dinner-table scenes and the two garage scenes). In Ideology, Genre, and Auteur Wood argues that there is a double incest theme that permeates the film: Uncle Charlie and Emmy, as well as Uncle Charlie and Young Charlie. Wood uses the notion of double incest to support his argument that 'the key to Hitchcock's films is less suspense than sexuality (or, alternatively, that his 'suspense' always carries a sexual charge in ways sometimes obvious, sometimes esoteric); and that sexual relationships in his work are inevitably based on power. ' There is an obvious struggle for power over Young Charlie that not only supports this claim but also symbolizes the fight between good and evil. On the one side there is the two Charlies and their 'connection' to one another.

However, if Uncle Charlie wins over her it will mean a climax ending in her death. On the other side is the good detective Graham. If he is successful it will mean the continuation of the idyllic American way; we can envision them settling down in a small town to have a family of their own. Once again we see the struggle of film noir with our pleasant small American town. Yet another example of the use of doubles in the film are the two chase scenes, the original with Uncle Charlie being pursued by the detectives, and the second where Uncle Charlie pursues Young Charlie on the streets of Santa Rosa. Hitchcock uses this device to bring film noir full force into the sleepy little town.

The second chase is far more suspenseful than the first, with Young Charlie being caught with the aid of the traffic policeman. The message is clear, even the police can not help her now. All of a sudden we are taken to a seedy underside of Santa Rosa that we have never seen, the 'Til Two bar, it is as if Uncle Charlie has willed it into being just so he could be comfortable. In the bar we are introduced to Louise a high school friend of Charlie's. With this gesture that Hitchcock attacks the idea of small town harmony and in so doing comments on the contradictions in American values. In a drab, monotone voice an almost lifeless Louise describes her life up to this point: I was in Charlie's class in school.

I sure was surprised to see you come in. I never thought I'd see you in here. I've been here two weeks. Lost my job over at Kern's.

I've been in half the restaurants in town. The two worlds meet in the stark contrast between Charlie and Louise. The dream like town that is the ideal of American existence is shown to be just a fantasy. All things have two sides, whether that be the American town, or movies. Comedy must have its tragedy.

Hitchcock must do his part however, to protect the American ideal from the seedy undertones of his own invention. Though there is always the good and the bad, the comedy and the tragedy, in the end the good must prevail. While Young Charlie loses her innocence, we see in her the rebirth of 'small-town' values. Uncle Charlie's crimes can not be blamed on society but on an accident with a bike after which Charlie was 'never the same again'. In doing so society is washed of all responsibility (for, of course, there is no way that a normal person could ever kill.) In keeping with this principle the film attempts to absolve Young Charlie from all responsibility in her Uncle's death, for it is seen as an accident that occurred when Young Charlie was fighting her Uncle in self-defence. In the final stages of the film we are brought back to the small town introduced to us in the beginning, this time, however, it is in morning for a beloved son.

Charlie's death has brought Graham back to Young Charlie. We can see the good side has won the battle for her. As in early situational Charlie has learned her moral lesson and the episode may end. This paper has attempted to investigate the ways in which Alfred Hitchcock blended conventions of film noir with those of a small town domestic comedy.

It first looked at the opening scenes of the film in which the two conventions were introduced. It then went on to analyse the film with the aid of Robin Wood's article Ideology, Genre, Auteur. From these two forms we can see that film noir and small town comedy were used as a means of commenting on the contradictions in American values..