Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I had an hour conversation this morning at breakfast about Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt". We've seen it a bunch of times but I admire it more and more. The house where it was filmed is a couple of blocks from our older son's house and that is a kick. But this time we realized that though there is no mention of World War II, this film, made in 1942, is really all about the evil hidden in the ordinary world of ordinary people. Joseph Cotten, one of my favorite actors of mid last century, is astounding as Uncle Charlie, and everyone else is perfectly cast, especially the mother. Each scene is symbolic and an integral part of the action, from the train pulling into the station, big and black with black smoke billowing up, to the train at the next to last scene. Hichcock shows us the tiny turns and twists that can make people embrace their darker natures, and how we block ourselves from unconscious knowledge we may possess. The movie is a perfect jewel for the question: What made ordinary German folk go along with, or turn away from what was happening to their neighbors and friends during the years between the first and second world wars? How is it we let evil fourish, since one man alone could not have murdered so many people without massive cooperation. I think we see now what a struggle it always is between good and evil, and that passivity allows evil to flourish. The film is brilliant, because the struggle is framed as always there, just underneth the surface, and evil is seductive. In the film good triumphs, but it is, as we know, by luck and not likely given the circumstances. Ordinary people. Ordinary lives. The complexities we inhabit.