Just what kind of man Cotton really is, but providing tension through Cotten's devious charade as a gentle, kind man deserving of his family's love-a tension which fuels the chilling cat-and-mouse game between Cotten and Wright that provides the film's suspenseful center. The film's construction is adroit and perfectly calculated, letting the viewer know early on This is Hitchcock's most penetrating analysis of a murderer-a masterful profile, aided by Cotten's superb performance, of a subtle killer who cannot escape his dark passions, despite a superior intellect. To get closer to her uncle, hoping to learn about his past and allay her fears. Battling the thought that her beloved uncle could be the mass killer the detective has suggested he is, Charlie tries Gradually, though, Charlie's past comes to town to haunt him, especially when a detective (Carey) shows up. Strange behavior is explained as an idiosyncracy by his adoring niece.
Charlie stops at a bank and makes a scene while depositing $40,000, but his He claims to be ill, and the family quickly takes him home, where Emma pampers him. (Wonacott and Bates) greet Uncle Charlie at the train station, but are shocked to see him limping on a cane, being helped by porters. She, her father (Travers), and her young brother and sister (Onīoard the train, as a passenger in his cameo appearance, is director Hitchcock.) In Santa Rosa his niece, also named Charlie (Wright), is delighted to hear that her urbane, witty, and adventurous uncle will be visiting the family. He barely escapes the police and then boards a train, having wired his sister Emma (Collinge) in Santa Rosa, California, that he is coming for an extended stay with the only family he has. More frightening by having his crafty homicidal maniac intrude into the tranquility of a warm, middle-class family living in a small town, deeply developing his characters and drawing from the soft-spoken Joseph Cotten one of the actor's most remarkable and fascinating performances.Īt the beginning of the film, Charlie (Cotten) is shown wooing and then murdering a woman for her riches. The sly Hitchcock made this chiller all the Deathly Americana not as fun or spine-tingling as other Hitchcocks, but who's complaining? Hitch's favorite among his own films was based on the case of the real-life "Merry Widow Murderer," Earle Leonard Nelson, a mass strangler of the 1920s.
0 kommentar(er)
