Shadows of Doubt: Thornton Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock's America at War

Abstract

Abstract Before beginning his military service in the summer of 1942, Thornton Wilder collaborated with acclaimed suspense director Alfred Hitchcock to write the movie Shadow of a Doubt. Despite its simple premise regarding an all-American family endangered by a dark secret, the film reveals both men's concern with the war and the ideologies behind the aggression of the Axis Powers. This article explores how the collaboration built upon the two artists' shared sense of the uniqueness of their dramatic forms, including a similar democratic sensibility and a use of doubles to emphasize the audience's (and western civilization's) vulnerability to the appeal and threat of fascism.