What else happened this year? World War 2 stuff mainly. Of most note is that Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t able to get back to the UK to visit dying family members, and so made this movie as a form of therapy.
What is the plot - in one sentence? A family in small town America have their lives changed when the younger brother of the mother rocks up for a visit.
I don't have time, just spoil it for me? He forms a strong bond with his niece above all, but charms the family. Despite this, he’s a murderer of widows, and after a struggle, dies in a train crash. The town he’s in mourns him, his secret going with him to his grave.
What is the meaning of the title? It seems a pun, but there is a shadow of doubt about him from very early on.
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| Yet another awkward movie dinner. From L-R: the dad, the niece, uncle, and the two smaller children. |
Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? On the whole I’ll argue that this movie has aged well, the town the family are in is just idealism, USA, - it’s a dreamed-for town of picturesque squares, traffic cops instead of traffic lights, and sharing malts in diners with your handsome uncle. As for abuse, the uncle spends a lot of time trying to kill his niece (they’re both called Charlie) and he also grabs her by the wrists a little. Fair play to her for tripping him up and making him fall into the path of a train.
Of note is that Charlie (the girl) is poisoned by carbon monoxide, but manages to escape. She’s slapped around a little by the doctor, and given whiskey (not whisky…) for her troubles. I don’t think that’s how they do it these days.
Any thoughts? This is a ridiculous movie, but one which seems more than a little self-aware. Because of that, everything in the movie makes perfect sense.
Uncle Charlie goes out of his way to destroy an article in the newspaper about a series of widow killings. The article is presumably one of many, and him taking it from a paper is more suspicious than anything else he could have done. We also have a couple of police officers who, for some reason, are trailing uncle Charlie, sure that it’s him. They, for some reason, don’t know what he looks like.
Meanwhile, Charlie the Younger, having fallen out of an obvious lust with her uncle and realised his penchant for killing fat old ladies, gives him an ultimatum: Leave or I’ll tell the police. He stays, and attempted murder of her follows… what’s interesting though, is that she’s willing to let her murderous uncle’s spree continue, just so that she can save her mother’s feelings. In the logic of the movie, though, this is all perfectly fine,
Also of note, the Family ages are all over the place. There’s Charlie the niece, who is late teens, ish, two tiny children, and the parents who seem in their 50s at least. That doesn’t matter, as the smallest kid steals the show a bit, she’s an avid reader who talks like an adult. She gives a prayer to ‘Veronica Lake’ and just wants to be left alone to read, who can blame her? The other child, a boy, seems only to tell of crazy superstitions and old wives tales of the time, for example, ‘if you sing at the table, you’ll marry a crazy husband.’
Would you recommend this? Yes. This was lubricious but a lot of fun, and also a little tense at times.
Of particular interest to me is the town, an everywhere USA which never could have existed in reality. A prosperous place where people are milling around at all times, policemen who know everyone, attractive schoolfriends of the younger Charlie, and a bunch of funny secondary characters. My two favourites being a skeletal librarian who religiously enforces the 10am-9pm opening hours of the town library (can you imagine that happening now?), and a neighbour who is obsesses with the perfect murder and chats about it endlessly with the father of the family, each planning death on the other in a friendly way.
The town is tiny, but has a town square, an upper crust, and a single seedy bar where the Charlies have a tense conversation. In the end, it (the movie and the town) is charming enough that you don’t mine some of the most ludicrous plot holes of all time.
Final thoughts? Throughout the movie, almost subconsciously, we are shown footage of old couples dancing. There’s not any explaination – they can’t be attractive widows prime for a killing, as they seem to be dancing with their husbands. It’s never answered, and I’m too tired to even care.
What’s interesting is how strange this movie is, There’s a lot of implied cousin-ly attraction there for most of the first half of the movie. Certainly the uncle / neice relationship is framed romantically at first. After Uncle Charlie’s death, the choice to deify the guy (for ‘business success’ ?) is also a very interesting end to the movie, but perhaps most interesting of all is the policework. The two police men follow a man across the country when they don’t know what he looks like, make up elaborate lies to follow him around, and enter his home, and then at the end of it, the younger one ends up engaged to the young neice. It’s not ideal policework, I’ll give you that.
That's it, 77 down, few fewer to go! The others can be found here
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