3 It is, I maintain, the first film in which he emerges as predominantly an American filmmaker and creates a major work deeply rooted in the American cultural tradition. In the following pages, I will examine Shadow of a Doubt (1943) as registering a crucial moment in the process of Hitchcock’s Americanization. From 1939 onwards, the relation between the culture of his original homeland and that of his adopted one is a frequent presence in Hitchcock’s cinema. Also like them-and unlike such more extreme instances of cultural “extraterritoriality” (George Steiner’s term) 2 as Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, or Samuel Beckett-Hitchcock crossed no linguistic barriers and instead went on to engage, in his work, the Shavian (or pseudo-Shavian) paradox that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. Like them, he was neither or, more accurately, both.

Auden, who cannot be described as unambiguously either British or American. He thus became one of those modern artists, like Henry James, T.

Allowing for numerous international trips, he remained in the United States for the rest of his life, residing in California, making movies in Hollywood, and eventually taking American citizenship 1. Britain would never again be home for the London-born Hitchcock. On March 1, 1939, Alfred Hitchcock-accompanied by his wife and daughter, a personal assistant, a cook, and a maid-boarded the Queen Mary in Southampton in order to set sail for New York. THE PERSISTENCE OF EVIL IN HITCHCOCK'S SHADOW OF A DOUBT

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS:

Main actors of movie shadow of a doubt