William Rothman, the author of the new book, “Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze” (Harvard University Press), presents a lecture on Shadow of a Doubt following the film. In a review of the book which will appear in the April American Film, UC Berkeley professor Paul Thomas finds Rothman's presentation “clear, passionate and witty,” and the book “the best treatment of Hitchcock to date.
“Rothman's writing...presents a lucid and compelling portrait of Hitchcock's art, doing equal justice to his formal cinematic strategies and his thematic concerns (among Hitchcock's constant themes, Rothman demonstrates, are tne nature and relationship of love, murder, sexuality, marriage, madness, the act of viewing, and theater). A central contention of the book is that it was Hitchcock, more than any other director, who raised film to a modern self-consciousness - that modernism, in film, began with Hitchcock.”
William Rothman is a professor at Harvard's Carpenter Center for Visual Arts.
Shadow of a Doubt
Considered by Hitchcock to be his finest film, Shadow of a Doubt stars Joseph Cotten as a rather charming murderer, specializing in wealthy widows, who hides out at the home of his small-town sister. Shot on location at Santa Rosa, the film blends satire and mystery in examining the effect of “Uncle Charlie's” visit on an amusingly typical American family.