Shadow Of A Doubt, To Catch A Thief Essay, Research Paper
2. Hitchcock likes to blur the ideas of love and obsession, and of safety and danger into relation,
or association. In To Catch a Thief, Danielle a bit illicitly tells Robie “I do one favor per day”.
She’s like a siren sex symbol, meeting Robie for the first time in the potentially romantic
restaurant wine cellar, and wearing a bright red dress, lifting it openly to divert the overpassing
police in the plane. The latter example also implies relation with her as dangerous by the fact
alone that Robie seeks to evade the police. Danielle of course is also the major villain, and she and
Robie flirt with one another. But she might not want to use Robie just for information and as a
dupe because she catfights with Francie when they first meet in competition for the attention of
Robie. Francie herself resides in Monte Carlo searching for an able husband after many milksop
failures, as her mother would put it. She’s tired of the search but also desperate for a prospective
man of some substance, and Robie fits her tastes and requisites. So she easily begins to obsess
over him. Though she assumes an icy composure, she swiftly advances on Robie with a kiss the
first time they meet. And their meeting place is in a gambling house, indicative of risk and chance
in their association. In completing the certainty in her attraction for Robie, she takes him on a wild
car chase with the observing police over the steep cliff roads as Robie nervously grabs his knees.
Picnicking right after, Francie discloses her discovery of Robie?s true identity, dissolving his
Burns alias, (a reference to their passion), as they eat chicken legs and breasts. Francie mixes love,
obsession and danger when Robie grabs her in frustration about his identity: “Strong grip. The
kind a burglar needs.” She also taunts his former obsession with burglarizing by offering herself
with a glistening diamond necklace on. “Are you nervous to be in a room with thousands of
dollars? … there, waiting for you.” This same love/obsession duality is pronounced more vividly in
costume when Francie wears her golden gown to the gala. Love might also be associated with
death in its danger context. Both Danielle and Francie attend the funeral of Danielle’s father;
Danielle begins to shed her true identity to Robie as she berates him, and Francie is in regrets over
Robie (right before she makes amends with him). At one point Danielle also asks Robie “Isn’t it
nicer to be killed by love?” Being a thief herself, Danielle might represent the specious assumption
that women steal men’s hearts. In a ploy to avoid the cops and help Robie seamlessly scale the
gala building?s roof to spot the true cat burglar, Mrs. Stevens also requests the masked Robie to
fetch her heart pills. Attraction helps weed out deception.
4. Shadow of a Doubt regularly uses more humor than perhaps most Hitchcock films. It does so
in the vein of delaying suspense, which also ironically heightens the suspense; the core of which is
a block or obstacle to Charlie Oakley’s past actions, unshedding his true character. Introduced to
Oakley lying groggily on a bed, the viewer’s curiosity about his condition, the money strewn on
the bedside floor and the two surveying detectives outside his dwelling are paused with the first
example of humor delaying suspense by the maid Mrs. Martin as she exclaims the appropriate
truism “Everyone’s not honest you know”. Soon after, attention on the main plot point is
distracted by seeing a bright, bookish child, Anne Newton, nonchalantly answer and take a
message on the telephone as she rivets her eyes to her treasured book. She and her younger
brother Roger quip throughout the film, distinguishing them in sharp contrast from their clueless
parents. It’s like the kids and their eldest, nubile sibling, Young Charlie, in their quick wits run the
household in reality instead. At the same time, Young Charlie’s initial dissatisfaction traces her
uncle Charlie’s stark view on life. She complains to her mother Emma ” … no real conversations
… dinner, dishes and bed”. Unlike her mother, Young Charlie has an apparently experienced, fed
up and banal outlook on traditional maternal homemaking. Her only evidence of youth lies in her
innocent dreaminess which is linked to uncle Charlie, her namesake, as he’ll later shatter it. This
begins with her belief in telepathy as the means by which uncle Charlie is influenced to contact her
and her family. She relates her intuitive excitement to the telegrapher right before she seeks to
somehow contact him. The telegrapher ironically responds “I don’t know what you’re saying. I
only send messages.” Humorous suspense highlights what’s to come in the Newton household as
uncle Charlie upon arrival chucks his hat on his bed after Joe wishes him not to. Charlie asks if
he’s suspicious and Joe replies “No. I don’t believe in inviting trouble.” Joe and his murder buff
friend Herb regularly share the pros and cons of proposed murder scenarios. Joe relates a method
of clean murder and Herb wonders where the clues are. Joe retorts “I’m not talking about writing
books. I’m talking about murder.” About his wife Emma: she in unknowing sensibility stalls the
detectives in their pretext to simply shoot broken eggs while they’re in an effort to work up to
capture Charlie’s image for police review. “I can’t let the eggs stand.” Also in advance of the plot,
Young Charlie learns in ironic dismay from a newspaper that among the three widow murders,
one was a comedienne. Further closing in on uncle Charlie, Joe and Herb trade the knowledge
that the only other suspect for the murder of the widows, a fugitive on the east coast, ran into a
plane’s running prop while the police were in pursuit. It’s amusing how Hitchcock can combine
gore and engrossing suspense in such unorthodox humor.