shadow of a doubt opening scene film techniques

Losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night.

What do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, The best hotels, every day by the thousands. Husbands who spent their lives making fortune, then they die and leave money to their wives. Charles begins discussing his feelings towards women:Ĭharles: Cities are full of women, middle aged, and widows. However, about an hour into the film, as the tension continues to grow, we see the family seated at the table for dinner. Is Charles the Merry Widow Killer? From the ring he gives to Charlie, to an aggressive pull at the young Charlie’s wrist, we don’t have a definitive answer for most of the film, but we may be as paranoid as Charlie. There are a variety of hints scattered around this psychological thriller that play to the audience’s suspicion. From the opening chase sequence to the scene where Charlie and the detective become locked in the barn, Hitchcock crafted the editing meticulously so that the tension builds with subtle hints of what is to come. Shadow of a Doubt features connecting sequences of shots that build suspense but need to be conjoined in order to progress the story forward. It is a small portion of a larger story that, when joined together, creates the entire narrative. Hitchcock understood the idea of the montage and how the act of cutting a piece of film is meant to join that piece of story to another. Of course the most elementary form is the juxtaposition of imagery in various sizes.” Montage means the assembly of pieces of film, which move in rapid succession before the eye and create an idea. Mosaic is assembling something to create a whole. We call it cutting, it isn’t exactly that. “Well you have two kinds of what we might call montage.

Shadow of a doubt opening scene film techniques