Waltzing with Narcissists

Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt serves as an exemplary example of the psychothriller genre. Hitchcock plants a seed of suspicion in viewers upon their initial meeting of Uncle Charlie. Within the first few minutes of the film, he is presented as a corpse—the undead—as he lies quietly in his bed with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes and voice are devoid of emotion. Although Uncle Charlie displays a generally apathetic demeanor, it is apparent that he exercises great control to present a façade to the outside world. That seed grows as the story develops. 

The film heavily implies that Uncle Charlie is the Merry Widower Murderer but leaves a sliver of doubt by presenting information that there is another suspect in the string of murders. The viewer is left to ask whether Uncle Charlie is just a weird guy who happens to have a strong distaste for wealthy widows and is attached, through a number of unfortunate coincidences, to the victims of the murders. The seed planted earlier grows in every which direction as the viewer questions what they are watching. The film unveils multiple interpretations of the events unfolding on screen, some more conventional than others. An example is watching the film in a Fight Club-esque way: one of those Charlies is a figment of the other Charlie’s imagination. I don’t particularly subscribe to this interpretation of the film, but it’s entertaining to give it a try.

With that said, Uncle Charlie definitely kills rich old ladies for fun. Mark Seltzer’s “The Serial Killer as a Type of Person” presents the characterization of serial murders as having a cooling-off period. The events of the film take place during Uncle Charlie’s cooling-off period as the newspaper headlines found in the film and the gifts that Charlie gives his family indicate that he had recently killed multiple women within an allotted time before visiting his family. Uncle Charlie paints his desire to move to Santa Rosa, California, in the guise of wanting to live close to his family, but Uncle Charlie really wants to live within a bubble of stranger-intimacy. The people of Santa Rosa demonstrate that they know of the events happening in the lives of their fellow townspeople—the line between private and public has been blurred.

The relationship between Uncle Charlie and Young Charlie highlights the narcissism that the serial killer is drawn to. Young Charlie’s introduction to the viewer mirrors Uncle Charlie’s first appearance in the film; they’re both lying in bed until someone interrupts them. Besides sharing the same name, Young Charlie claims that she and her uncle share a special, telekinetic connection. Both Young Charlie and her family remark on the similarities between her and her uncle. Their closeness leaves an unsettling feeling bubbling up in the viewer’s stomach, because the line between familial closeness and attraction feels as if it has been crossed at times. I can’t help but wonder whether the Newton household is oblivious to the nature of their daughter’s relationship with her uncle or if they are simply turning a blind eye. Regardless, their sexual tension could be cut by glass. By the end of the film, it appears as if the empty circularity of self-seeking, as Seltzer puts it, has come to fruition.

 The musical composition of Franz Lehár’s “The Merry Widow’s Waltz”—and the visuals of the waltz that accompanies it—creates a haunting presence in the film. The twirling bodies become an apparition as they are superimposed within sequences of current events. Young Charlie finds the tune to be an earworm and welcomes the song to take over both her mind and the sequence unfolding on screen. However, when Young Charlie becomes suspect of her dear uncle’s violent hobby, she develops an aversion to the waltz. Although the song becomes a reminder of Uncle Charlie’s distaste for wealthy widows (as signaled by his MRA-esque rant), the waltz becomes a signifier of a cycle—a cycle of narcissism-driven violence—when Young Charlie, through her paranoia, is ultimately responsible for her uncle’s demise.