The real action of the film is Young Charlie’s loss of innocence as she begins to understand the world as it really is. While some critics, like Martin Blank, assert, “Uncle Charlie has […] corrupted Young Charlie’s innocence forever,”10 this analysis is incomplete. As the opening sequence suggests, Young Charlie was already discontent with her life in her family and hometown; thus her fall was inevitable. As Young Charlie begins to understand Uncle Charlie’s true nature—he is not a savior but rather a “charming psychopath”11—her idealism about life outside of Santa Rosa starts to crumble. In the end of the film, she is presented with potentially bleak choices: marry the detective, live inconsolably with her family, or risk a violent solitary life, like her uncle. Because she has already expressed her discontent with an “average” life in a small town, the marriage or life with her family would inevitably be oppressive, but the alternative is unfathomable. Her living in the house with Uncle Charlie as he tries to kill her is only a physical manifestation of this internal struggle.

This reality—preserving the status quo or engaging in violent rebellion—has caused some critics, like James McLaughlin, to see the film as exposing the violent tension inherent in traditional family dynamics, especially for young women. To him, Uncle Charlie’s rage regarding widows is simply a fear of independent powerful women: “[rich widows] are regarded as inhuman and unnatural, unhinging both the social and natural orders.”12 Because she never agrees to marry Jack Graham, Young Charlie may “really [be] after the independence and power of the ‘merry widows’” whom Uncle Charlie targets. Thus, he attempts to kill Young Charlie because she too threatens to disturb the “natural order.”

One question that critics raise is what does Uncle Charlie represent: a defender of the old order, preserving it through violence, or a psychopath who has lost faith in traditional morality? His nostalgic recollections of the past suggest the former. When staring at a picture of his parents he says, “everybody was sweet and pretty then, the whole world, a wonderful world. Not like the world today. Not like the world now.” However, this is perhaps a bit too simplistic. Were he simply rebelling against deplorable values in a fallen world, he would have limits to his conduct and as far as we can tell in the film, he has none.

It may be more likely that Uncle Charlie represents the psychopath. Having lost all faith in humanity, he merely acts out of self-interest and impulse, a fact that is proven by his attempting to kill Young Charlie. It is this interpretation that allows Lincoln Konkle to claim that Wilder “prophesizes that such exceptions to the American and human norms as Uncle Charlie and Hitler will eventually fall and the world will continue on the right track.”13 In this vein, and in light of America (and Wilder’s) involvement in World War II, some critics see the story as even more didactic: “The film may be a morality play, a fable on the insidiousness of evil, and the need for the community to practice vigilance in protecting its citizens.”14 The final exchange between Jack Graham and Young Charlie seems to confirm this analysis. Jack reassures Charlie that the world is generally good but “sometimes it needs a lot of watching; seems to go crazy every now and then, like your Uncle Charlie.”

While there is no clear consensus on the meaning of much of the action, it is clear that Shadow of a Doubt represents one of the best collaborations of Hitchcock and Wilder’s careers, one that some Hitchcock critics claim as developmental for the director. Donald Spoto writes, “[The film] marked a major shift in the director’s tone, from Shadow of a Doubt on, there is a moral cynicism about the human condition that pervades all his best work.” If this outlook was learned from Wilder, Hitchcock’s understanding was incomplete. For, with the death of Uncle Charlie, “the world as represented by the typical American family and the typical small town has been ritually affirmed.”15 While the film and much of Wilder’s works test the moral fiber of his characters, human progress is nonetheless upheld, leaving cynicism in its wake.