'Is Alfred Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" a Noir film?' For what it's worth, in Silver & Ward's 'Film Noir' (1st edition, 1979), pp. 253-54, the entry by 'J.K.' (Julie Kirgo) on that film, includes the following: 'Like many of H's films, SHADOW OF A DOUBT focuses on the character of a psychopath. [Uncle] Charlie's evil is defined initially through contrasts with the normal behavior of his relatives in the small California town [...] He is a killer with a mission, bent on the destruction of what he sees as ugly, his crazed eye fixed on a vision of a lost time when, as he tells his beloved niece, "Everybody was sweet and pretty, the whole world - not like today." [...] She tells him, "We're sort of like twins"; and he tells her, "The same blood runs in our veins." The crucial difference between them is that of right and wrong. But H is not content with such a neat, black-and-white schematization. The title, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, refers not only to young Charlie's suspicions about her uncle, but also to the shadows that impinge upon her goodness. The will to destroy is the motivating force of young Charlie's life; shockingly it turns out that this is yet another thing that young Charlie shares with him, if only momentarily, by accident and by necessity. For in the end, Uncle Charlie is brought down by his [literal] better half - and young Charlie is driven to destroy the thing she loves.' Confirming, and lending weight to, the point about young Charlie's 'will to destroy' that she shares with her uncle, is H's observation to Charles Thomas Samuels (in 'Encountering Directors', 1972, p. 238) that 'she IS ruthless' - notably, in the scene where she comes downstairs wearing the ring that Uncle Charlie gave her, as a signal that he must leave or be executed. For a rather different, and broader, emphasis on will (and cosmic Will) in SHADOW OF A DOUBT and other H films, see my article "Will and Wilfulness" on the 'Screening the Past' website: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/kmfr12a.htm What I would conclude is this. There are elements of film noir in SHADOW OF A DOUBT, but the film's main impetus comes from something else again. I see the film as H's American version of THE LODGER (1926), concerned with inner (psychological), or universal, experience before it is a work of film noir, which is predominantly an extraverted (if brooding) American form and style. This is in line with my reading of H as having always been a 'Romantic-eclectic' director. - Ken Mogg (author of the uncut UK edition of 'The Alfred Hitchcock Story' - I disown the cut and 'simplified' US version). Website: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin abd ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite