You can study film by identifying shots all you want. ![]() “They are able to engage in ways that leverage what they’ve learned in other liberal arts classes, and in so doing come to better understand visual storytelling, recognizing what it is that you can do in film that you cannot do in literature. Students can unpack a film’s visual construction, explore its genealogy and implications, and draw conclusions as to its social, historical and intellectual resonances,” says Kornhaber. “With a liberal arts education, you have a lot of tools that you can use to approach film and to analyze the meaning of the filmic image. Like your Uncle Charlie.”Ĭonfessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was the first blatantly anti-Nazi film produced by a major Hollywood Studio Kornhaber references the detective at the end of Shadow of a Doubt, who tells young Charlie, “Sometimes needs a lot of watching. While a war against the Nazis raged in Europe, Hitchcock reminded moviegoers that the same evil could exist in our own seemingly safe communities. We cannot avoid looking at him in this terrible moment, and it’s for a reason.” We stop and look at Uncle Charlie, and Uncle Charlie looks right back at us. “It’s something he learned from the expressionists. “Hitchcock amends that to say, ‘Well, if you really stop and look at your Uncle Charlie’…he literalizes that process, understanding that we’re not going to like what we see,” says Kornhaber. You have to have some literacy in Hitchcock, you have to understand it’s 1943 and you have to understand that Uncle Charlie is, metaphorically, a Nazi.”Īs Kornhaber points out, it helps to know that Shadow of a Doubt was written by Thornton Wilder, who also wrote Our Town, a play that ends with a monologue from a young woman who sees life differently after she dies: “We don’t have time to look at one another…All that was going on in life and we never noticed.” “If you think about the conversation that the film is having, and think about how Hitchcock later filmed the Nazi characters in Notorious - revealing an outright barbarism in characters who seem pretty civilized on the surface - there’s a whole discussion to be had around what true depravity can look like, and what it means to dehumanize other people…That conversation is happening cinematographically in Hitchcock, but you have to understand the context to really see it. With a liberal arts education, you are well equipped to really unpack and unlock that moment. “A lot of film classes or textbooks will note how the scene shows Hitchcock focusing our attention…well yes, but why? It has to do with history, literature, sociology, psychology…there are so many aspects of the liberal arts that actually plug into that moment. “Hitchcock makes sure we’re looking directly at Uncle Charlie in this moment. The words are chilling, but understanding the context of the film - when it was made, who wrote the script and why the director chose a certain camera shot - reveals layers of deeper meaning that are beyond words alone.īeloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) reveals a more sinister side in this close-up from Shadow of a Doubt. The uncle continues: “Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?” Turning his face directly to the camera, her uncle coolly responds, “Are they?” At this point young Charlie, off camera, interjects, “They’re alive. Kornhaber observes that during this speech the camera slowly moves from a wider shot to a closer shot of Uncle Charlie, and then stops. Proud of their jewelry but of nothing else. Drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge. ![]() ![]() Poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).ĭonna Kornhaber, an associate professor of English at UT Austin and a nationally recognized Academy Film Scholar, recalls a scene in Shadow of a Doubt in which Uncle Charlie, portrayed by Joseph Cotten, reveals his true nature and all but confirms to his niece that he is the “Merry Widow Murderer” sought in a nationwide manhunt.Īt the dinner table Uncle Charlie describes rich widows as “useless…you see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands.
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