Response 4: Shadow of a Doubt

“I figured there must have been a human being in there”: Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt

            What is easily read as sexual tension in Shadow of a Doubt may indeed be erotically charged. It may also be a frustrated maneuvering between the self and other—which the sexual often is—of two who interact and never converge. Mark Seltzer mentions this separation and pain in his “The Serial Killer as a Type of Person,” this intense hunger to know the self and its secrets as they appear external to the known body. Young Charlie’s exploration begins like a game, while Uncle Charlie’s seeking almost seems to wound him. His fascination with the proverbial reflection in the pool is coupled with the urge to destroy it—that is to say, he’s met this figure in young Charlie that so well mirrors his own, that may be as smart as he is, but it (she) has some motivation that is foreign to him. So, in response to that uncanny reflection, he can possess, or he can destroy.

            While we could have a psychoanalytic field day with some of the lines/themes in this film (destroying being one of them, taken in a sexual context; Charles’ aggressive deliveries of “give it to me,” and “you can see me get off [the train],” taken tongue-in-cheek; even the scene after being met at the train when Charles trails behind, watching young Charlie walk ahead of him, pulling out a cigar, making sure his luggage “isn’t too heavy for [her]”), there is something darker here than carnal tension. Most of the scenes between the two are slower, quieter, more secret. Plenty are spent behind closed doors. There is something much more compelling in watching these two dance around each other in hidden spaces, often in mental spaces, something more mysterious in trying to know another person when “no one knows what goes on inside when the doors are locked.”

            This interiority, the lack of which is discussed in Seltzer’s piece, is somehow vacant in the killer (99). Against our better judgement, and all his protections, then, Uncle Charlie is hiding—very literally—nothing. That void is yet stirred by the young Charlie, acting as a “foreign body perturbing the balance” of Uncle Charlie’s persona. Her sudden meddling presence in his carefully designed life might act as a quieter version of the capital-v Voice that disturbs his makeshift structure of a subject (102). Her view of him from the outside (as well as the filming techniques that might allow us in) proves the power of concealment. We’re hard-pressed to go beyond the image and into it, particularly if we are told there is nothing “in there” to find.

            At points when he is nearing some kind of truth, or even admission, Charles is filmed in profile—a partial-view of a hollow subject. A key scene (almost painfully symbolic—never minding doors and locks and keys) situates young Charlie and her older counterpart on the back stairwell: her illuminated beneath a lamp, and he in complete shadow, where his face is altogether indiscernible. A similar scene, even more notable for its style, is an extreme close-up during Charles’ monologue about useless women, in which, again, we can only one side of his face. Young Charlie (now faceless herself) is heard offscreen inviting sympathy for these women who are alive, who are human beings, and we witness a slow mechanical turn of Charles’ head to face us, in the very moment he questions, “Are they?”

            Uncle Charlie knows how to pattern himself. He likes people who “face facts.” He has had that “traumatic replacement of perception by representation,” and can’t intuit an alternative to his code of knowing (Seltzer 104). Add to this a cast of pedantic people who surround young Charlie (like Ann, the ever-questioning younger sister; her father, the ever-conniving murderer-in-the-making), and Charlie appears almost alone in her creative intuition, making her natural prey. Charles bashes his sister for not having “better sense,” but he doesn’t seem to encourage this quality in women either, despite constantly disparaging them for not having it. He tries to discourage Charlie by mocking her as the “clever little girl that knows something,” telling her first that “it isn’t good to find things out,” and later that she ought to “use [her] wits, learn something.”

            The confusion continues as Charles’ relationship with his niece becomes more physical and more threatening. Earlier on in the film he leads he by the elbow, takes her by the wrists, every touch more violent as time goes on. At one point we see him with a hand around her neck—both an erotic zone and a locus of control—calling Charlie the “thing I love most in the world.” When pressed for meaning, this passing phrase contradicts his hatred for materialism and makes us question his capacity for and definition of love. Young Charlie’s gradual transformation from adored niece to complication turns immediate here: she isn’t the person he loves most, and that makes her more easily destroyed.

            Of course we know that Uncle Charlie is in fact destroyed in the end, but we are left with a reflection of him whose eyes we cannot meet. While Charles is praised during the funeral, young Charlie and Jack stand outside the church and vow to keep each other’s secrets. They are quiet, detached, and contemplative, often looking off into space or at the ground. In this scene, young Charlie becomes the one who is hidden from us, we are on the outside again. Now we can only study her face, wondering what might be inside her head, whether there is a human being left in there anymore.