Alfred Hitchcock's 'Shadow of a doubt'

Today in our lesson, we watched the opening of 'Shadow of a doubt'.

The opening introduces the character Uncle Charlie, and sets the scene of the movie. It starts with a longshot of a run down town along a river, and slowly zooms into a window of a house where we find Uncle Charlie laying on a bed. He has a cigar lit, and has money on the floor next to his bed. His clothes are smart, these things suggest that he is rich, but as the money if on the floor, he is not too obsessed with his money. The idea of him being rich however, is questioned when we notice that the room he is in is in facts a hotel room, or a room he is letting due to there being a sink in the room, and a woman who knocks on his door which we think could be the cleaner or landlady checking on him. When Uncle Charlie looks of of the window and sees the men who knocked for him, he gets angry, and through his glass against the wall. Later on we discover he is going to stay with family in Santa Rosa, California. This is when we see his niece, Charlotte, or Charlie.

There is a lot of mirroring and contrast in this opening, such as the

areaUncle Charlie is in, and Santa Rosa.

Both of these places are very different, the

area Uncle Charlie lives is run down and dull while Santa Rosa is more lively, brighter and looks like a better place. Also, both Uncle

Charlie and Charlie when we first meet them are lying on their beds suggesting they are similar, while at the same time, we see

a difference as Uncle Charlie is in the dark, and Charlie is in the light.