shadow of a doubt opening scene analysis

The church is packed, and we learn it's 1964 as Flynn talks about President Kennedy's assassination the year before and how that event was a tragedy everyone in the nation shares so, in its way, it brought people together because they all shared that event. Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) delivers his sermon as Donald and Jimmy serve mass. Jimmy could care less whether anyone is fat, but Donald is body conscious and checks himself out in the mirror, unsure of himself.

Jimmy doesn't think so, and asks if Donald's clothes fit okay. When Donald arrives, he looks at himself in the mirror and asks Jimmy if he thinks he's fat. Donald is the first black student at the school. Another altar boy, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster), arrives for mass shortly thereafter. Jimmy makes it into the sacristy at his church and dresses into his cassock, before starting to prepare the curettes of water and wine and incense, all the things he needs to serve mass. Jimmy races out of the house, passed the Russian man who asks him for a paper and coffee but Jimmy can't stop because he is late for church, and he's an altar boy on what looks like his first day serving mass. The pre-title establishing shots are of a quiet church garden with statues of saints and angels, a Russian immigrant playing a zither, a boy named Jimmy (Lloyd Clay Brown) being awakened by his mother for Sunday mass and then the title, DOUBT. The movie opens on a working class street in an Irish/Italian Catholic neighborhood in the Bronx, N.Y, circa 1964

Shadow of a doubt opening scene analysis