Henry's Top 100 Performances of All-Time: #79 - Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a Doubt

"Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? Wake up, Charlie. Use your wits. Learn something."


Hitchcock Villain number 3...

Joseph Cotton is one of the more underrated actors of the forties and fifties. Though best known for being a favorite of Orson Wells, what's not talked enough about is how Cotton is the heart and backbone of Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Third Man. But even his best friend Orson Wells never used Cotton as well as Alfred Hitchcock did in the director's personal favorite: Shadow of a Doubt.

Cotton plays a killer who, in order get away from the police who are on to him on the east coast, decides to go stay with his sister's family in California. His niece, who is named Charlie after her beloved uncle, is the only person who senses that something is off with Uncle Charlie.

Cotton plays a lot of different emotions in the film, all of them flawlessly, and it is one of the more nuanced performances of a serial killer ever given. There's the genuine love he feels for his sister and niece. The bored appreciation of his brother-in-law. The weariness of dealing with his young nephew. And then, most chilling and impressive of all, those moments where he lets the world see his ugly side. He's not a raving loon, he's better at hiding it than that, but the audience can tell how disturbed he is.

Never more so than in the best scene of the film: