Shadow of a Doubt

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was British-born Alfred Hitchcock’s sixth American filmand the one that he at various times identified as his favourite and his best. It seems likely that one of the reasons he liked Shadow so much is that is an extraordinarily well-ordered narrative system, a meticulous cause and effect chain that melds its various scenes and sequences together to form a unified narrative that is highly effective in building suspense and cultivating identification with characters. This scrupulously organized film operates as a masterclass on principles of narrative design while generating resonant commentary on the nature of family life.This book redresses the deficit of sustained critical attention paid to Shadow even in the large corpus of Hitchcock scholarship. Analysing the film’s narrative system, issues of genre, authorship, social history, homesickness and ‘family values’, Diane Negra shows how the film’s impeccable narrative structure is wedded to radical ideological content, linking the film’s terrors to the punishing effects of looking beyond conventional family and gender roles. This book understands Shadow as an unconventionally female-centred Hitchcock text and a milestone film that marks the director’s emergent engagement with the pathologies of violence in American life and opens a window into the placement of femininity in World War II consensus culture and more broadly into the politics of mid-century gender and family life. 

'This is a wide-ranging book that examines Shadow of a Doubt in all sorts of perceptive ways... [It] is extremely good at teasing out the significance of Shadow of a Doubt'Carl Sweeney, The Movie Palace, 'Diane Negra makes a compelling case for her expansive, comprehensive scrutiny... Through her encyclopedic, exceptionally thorough interrogation... Negra prompts appreciation of the breadth and depth of Shadow of a Doubt and implicitly encourages a further questioning of what has – or hasn't – changed in the America portrayed so dramatically, accurately and ominously by Hitchcock.'  Hitchcock Annual #24

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, she is the author, editor or co-editor of twelve books ranging from Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (2001) to The Aesthetics and Affects of Cuteness (2016) to Imagining ''We' in the Age of 'I:' Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture (2021). She serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Television and New Media and as Chair of the Irish Fulbright Commission.