Critic Reviews

Hitchcock's discovery of darkness within the heart of small-town America remains one of his most harrowing films, a peek behind the facade of security that reveals loneliness, despair, and death.

No one would ever accuse Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt of being plausible, but it is framed so distinctively in the Hitchcock style that it plays firmly and never breaks out of the story.

You've got to hand it to Alfred Hitchcock: when he sows the fearful seeds of mistrust in one of his motion pictures he can raise more goose pimples to the square inch of a customer's flesh than any other director of thrillers in Hollywood.

Hitch’s habit of taking us to the edge of the abyss and then returning us with a wink, so often resulting in unconvincing happy endings, here seals one of his most pitiless visions of a monstrous cosmos admitted only to be denied.

The sly Hitchcock made this chiller all the more frightening by having his crafty homicidal maniac intrude into the tranquility of a warm, middle-class family living in a small town, deeply developing his characters and drawing from the soft-spoken Joseph Cotten one of the actor's most remarkable and fascinating performances.

Shadow is the acme of Hitchcock's special principal of dramatic counterpoint. The surface is sunny and buoyant; dark, deadly currents flow underneath. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]

Shadow of a Doubt is considered to be director Alfred Hitchcock's best American film. Hitchcock himself regarded it so. [02 Aug 1998, p.60]

A superb film.

Hitchcock is fully Hitchcock here, plunging deeply into his characters’ psyches, and remaining in full control of every cinematic effect.

Hitchcock at his cynical best. [18 Sept 1988, p.87]