Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film

This is another wonderful behind-the-scenes documentary about a Hitchcock film, this time "Shadow of a Doubt." Peter Bogdanovich, Teresa Wright, Hume Cronyn, and Patricia Hitchcock are all interviewed about the casting, the scouting of the locations, and the way Hitchcock directed. Hitchcock, his daughter says, loved bringing evil to Everytown America.

I love Hitchcock's casting of Cotten, using the belief that a killer, a con artist, doesn't look like a sleaze but is charming and attractive.

There is one other thing on the film that I love, especially: the idea the children are able to pick up on a person's soul because they go on instinct. In the movie, the children will not sit near Joseph Cotten.

Again, this was too short, but it was an insightful look into Hitchcock's favorite film and its preparation.

This is the featurette on the DVD of Shadow of a Doubt. It consists of interview with cast(including several of the leads) and crew(well, some, anyway... and Peter Bogdanovich is, as usual, among the best to listen to in this) and clips of the film. They talk about how much of a storyteller Hitch(R.I.P.) was(and yes, we get a few examples of his sardonic wit... who else could the quote in the summary line possibly be attributed to?), the excellent camera-work, how this did not rely on star power, and how this was about bringing evil to innocent, small town America, introducing menace where before there was none, and about the growth of a young and, until then, relatively naive girl. The documentary of course spoils the movie. It is very well-cut, except for one bit of wonky audio editing(that they may not have been able to get around), and it is pretty interesting throughout. This comes to 34 minutes sans credits, and one extra with them. It keeps to a pretty nice pace. There is a bit of disturbing content, and a little violence in this. I recommend this to any fan of Alfred. 7/10