Ossessione (1943) Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
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SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) Italy (ICI) 142m BW When interviewed by admirer and famous acolyte François Truffaut, Alfred Language: Italian Hitchcock referred to Shadow of a Doubt as his favorite film. Tellingly, it’s Director: Luchino Visconti also one of his least flashy works, a quiet character study set in the heart of Producer: Libero Solaroli suburbia. Although the heart of his suburbia is still rotten with murder and Screenplay: Luchino Visconti, Mario deceit, Hitchcock emphasizes traditional suspense beats over intricate set Alicata pieces, stocking the story with just as much uneasy humor as tension. Photography: Domenico Scala, Aldo Tonti Charlie (Teresa Wright) is elated when her uncle and namesake Charlie Music: Giuseppe Rosati (played to smarmy perfection by Joseph Cotton) comes to visit her and her Cast: Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti, mother. She soon suspects her revered Uncle Charlie is actually a serial killer, Dhia Cristiani, Elio Marcuzzo, Vittorio “the Merry Widow Murderer,” on the run from his latest killing. Once on to Duse, Michele Riccardini, Juan de her suspicions, her Uncle Charlie doesn’t seem interested in leaving behind Landa any loose ends, but the younger Charlie doesn’t know how to reconcile her affection for her uncle with her fears. OSSESSIONE (1943) Hitchcock actually shot Shadow of a Doubt on location, in the small town One of the great speculative games one can play with cinema history centers U.S. (Skirball, Universal) 108m BW of Santa Rosa, California, the better to tear apart the flimsy façade and expose on Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione: what if this had been the picture that Director: Alfred Hitchcock the bland, safe suburbs for the hotbed of secrets it no doubt is. The script, heralded the arrival of an exciting new film movement from Italy, and not Producer: Jack H. Skirball written by Thornton Wilder with input from Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville, Roberto Rossellini’s Open City in 1945? It would have indeed been interesting, Screenplay: Gordon McDonell, takes perverse glee in destroying preconceived notions of quiet, small-town but alas we’ll never know; because Visconti’s screenplay was clearly lifted from Thornton Wilder life. The film is also peppered with numerous references to twins and the James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain and his publishers kept it Photography: Joseph A. Valentine duality of good and evil, paralleling the trustful and innocent Charlie with her off American screens until 1976, when it had its much belated premiere at the Music: Dimitri Tiomkin dangerous and deceitful uncle. New York Film Festival. Cain had just died, and probably never saw it—a pity, Cast: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Dimitri Tiomkin’s score keeps the suspense ratcheted up, particularly his because he would have discovered the best cinematic adaptation of his work. Macdonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, use of Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow” waltz—the signifier of Uncle Charlie’s Massimo Girotti is Gino Costa, a sweaty, T-shirt-clad drifter who lands a job Wallace Ford, Edna May Wonacott, guilt and the haunting motif that represents the horrific inclinations he can in a roadside café run by portly opera buff Bragana (Juan de Landa). Bragana Charles Bates, Irving Bacon, Clarence barely disguise or suppress. A pair of nosey neighbors also offer a running has a wife, Giovanna (the luminous Clara Calamai, Rossellini’s first choice for Muse, Janet Shaw, Estelle Jewell commentary, discussing the various means and methods by which a murder the Anna Magnani role in Open City), and it isn’t long before Gino and Giovanna Oscar nomination: Gordon McDonell might be committed and then covered up. That a real murder lurks right next are in each others arms, making plans to get away. Adhering closely to Cain’s (screenplay) door provides dollops of ironic humor. The neighbors continue to ruminate on storyline, Visconti is immensely aided by the sheer physical chemistry between various homicidal scenarios as Charlie races to settle her conflicted feelings for Calamai and Girotti; all of Cain’s descriptions of burning flesh and animal lust her Uncle Charlie before he permanently does it for her. JKl are rendered in Ossessione with an almost frightening intensity. Consequently, the whole economic imperative for the eventual murder takes somewhat of a backseat here. Visconti also doesn’t avoid the obviously homoerotic overtones of Gino’s relationship with “lo Spagnolo” (Elio Marcuzzo), a Spanish street performer with whom he goes on the road for a while, rather remarkable when one considers the film was made under the Fascist regime. One scene that surely would have delighted Cain, himself the son of an opera singer, is the local opera competition in which Bragana performs. A gruff and somewhat unapproachable figure—a far cry from Cecil Kellaway’s bumbling fool in Tay Garnett’s 1946 Hollywood version of the novel—he suddenly comes alive as he bursts into an aria, with a final flourish that brings the assembled listeners to their feet. Ossessione could have been the great example of the union of American film noir and Italian Neorealism; instead it remains something like the ancestral missing link for both movements. RP 190 191.