Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten.

Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell.

An unexpected visit by Charles Oakley, her charming and sophisticated Uncle Charlie, brings much excitement to the family and the small town.

That excitement turns to fear as young Charlie slowly realizes her uncle is in fact a wanted serial murderer known as the "Merry Widow" killer.

Uncle Charlie arrives bearing extravagant gifts for everyone: a watch for his brother-in-law, a fur for his sister, and an emerald ring for his niece.

[7] The project began when the head of David Selznick's story department, Margaret McDonell, told Hitchcock that her husband Gordon had an interesting idea for a novel that she thought would make a good movie.

His idea, called "Uncle Charlie", was based on the true story of Earle Nelson, a serial killer of the late 1920s known as "the Gorilla Man".

Shadow of a Doubt was both filmed and set in Santa Rosa, California, which was portrayed as a paragon of a supposedly peaceful, small, pre-War American city.

The stone railway station in the film was built in 1904 for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad and is one of the few commercial buildings in central Santa Rosa to survive the earthquake of April 18, 1906.

[10] Some of the buildings in the center of Santa Rosa that are seen in the film were damaged or destroyed by earthquakes in 1969; much of the area was cleared of debris and largely rebuilt.

In his score, Tiomkin quotes the Merry Widow Waltz of Franz Lehár, often in somewhat distorted forms, as a leitmotif for Uncle Charlie and his serial murders.

[8]: 110–1 Cinematographer Joseph A. Valentine described his work on the film: "Our Santa Rosa location was chosen because it seemed to be typical of the average American small city, and offered, as well, the physical facilities the script demanded.

The Santa Rosans were very cooperative, and most of our problems in these scenes were the ordinary ones of rigging scrims and placing reflectors or booster lights where they were needed."

We had with us two generator sets, ten 150-ampere arc spotlights, and the usual assortment of incandescent lights...making a total of 3,000 ampere maximum electrical capacity.

With this we lit up an expanse of four city blocks for our night-effect long shots!....Oddly enough, one of our less spectacular night scenes proved really the harder problem.

Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times, loved the film, stating that "Hitchcock could raise more goose pimples to the square inch of a customer's flesh than any other director in Hollywood".

[12] Time Magazine called the film "superb",[12] while Variety stated that "Hitchcock deftly etches his small-town characters and homey surroundings".

The publication predicted big box office for theaters presenting Hitchcock's latest work:Of all the startling feature films directed by Alfred Hitchcock—superman of suspense and wizard of mystery—this one is geared most highly to thrill American audiences and to pour coin into the coffers of U.S.

The story moves inflexibly toward an ending which the onlooker more or less clearly expects, but which elicits the periodic hope that the worst fears of Teresa Wright will not be realized.

[16] Hitchcock also enjoyed making Shadow of a Doubt the most, due to his "pleasant memories of working on it with Thornton Wilder" according to his conversation with Truffaut.

The site's consensus reads: "Alfred Hitchcock's earliest classic — and his own personal favorite — deals its flesh-crawling thrills as deftly as its finely shaded characters".

[23] The film was adapted for Cecil B. DeMille's Lux Radio Theater aired on January 3, 1944, with its original leading actress Teresa Wright and William Powell as Uncle Charlie (Patrick McGilligan said Hitchcock had originally wanted Powell to play Uncle Charlie, but MGM refused to lend the actor for the film).

The Screen Guild Theater adapted the film twice with Joseph Cotten, the first with Vanessa Brown as young Charlie, and the second with Deanna Durbin in the role.

[25] The film has been remade twice: in 1958 as Step Down to Terror,[26] and again (under the original title) as a 1991 TV movie in which Mark Harmon portrayed Uncle Charlie.