 From legendary director Alfred Hitchcock comes this "torrid, tense, tinglingly suspenseful" (Cosmopolitan) film that ranks as one of his best. Oscar Winner Ingrid Bergman "is literally ravishing" (Pauline Kael), and Cary Grant and Claude Rains give "excellent performances" (Variety) in this "taut spy movie that delivers a romantic punch" (The New Yorker)! When troubled beauty Alicia Huberman (Bergman) is recruited by American agent T.R. Devlin (Grant) to infiltrate a German spy ring in postwar Rio, she accepts... but soon finds herself falling in love with Devlin. And when she receives orders to seduce a Nazi kingpin (Rains), Alicia must sacrifice the only happiness she's ever known for a perilous mission that could ultimately cost her and Devlin their lives. Storyline: Following the conviction of her German father for treason against the U.S., Alicia Huberman takes to drink and men. She is approached by a government agent (T.R. Devlin) who asks her to spy on a group of her father's Nazi friends operating out of Rio de Janeiro. A romance develops between Alicia and Devlin, but she starts to get too involved in her work. Written by Col Needham Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman on January 15, 2012 -- The films of Alfred Hitchcock often seem divorced from our regular space time continuum, as if they exist in a rarefied world of their own. Now this is not to say they're not of their time, or that they don't ably recreate any given era, but even Hitch pieces that are solidly tied to a certain historical zeitgeist, like 1966's Torn Curtain, for example, could just as easily have been situated a few years this way or that way and indeed doesn't even really depend that much on the peculiar mid-sixties version of Cold War paranoia. Other films like Vertigo may be placed in a recognizable late fifties context, but seem to be separated from time itself, at least any rational experience of time. When Hitch gets topical, as he does from time to time (no pun intended), he tends to do so discursively, almost under the radar as it were, as in Norman Bates' passing comment early in Psycho that his hotel has never been the same since the Interstate system placed a freeway away from the inn with no easy exit granting access to it. And so it's rather odd that Hitchcock's Notorious begins with an overlay of text which identifies our time and place literally down to the minute. Working again with frequent collaborator scenarist Ben Hecht, Hitchcock does what he rarely ever does in a film, namely advertises its topicality, but that had been part of the dictum, explicit or implicit, handed down by erstwhile producer David O. Selznick, who ended up selling his interest in the property to raise some quick scratch, but who still retained a fifty percent stake in profits, which Selznick (if not Hitch himself) assumed meant he was due significant input into the film's production. (The producer credit actually went to Hitchcock, the first time in his long and storied career he was given that title). Notorious is one of the most famous and iconic of Hitch's films, studied endlessly in film classes for one incredible shot in particular, but often even the most picayune analysts gloss over the fact that this was a rather unusual Hitchcock subject, one intimately if admittedly tangentially connected to what was then one of the biggest news stories of the day (and quite possibly of all time): the nuclearization of Mankind. Though the atom bomb subplot isn't really germane to the main thrust of the story, and might in fact be likened to Hitchcock's beloved use of the "MacGuffin" (which Hitch actually spells "McGuffen" in an included interview with Truffaut) to drive the plot along, the fact that it's there at all signifies a really atypical approach by Hitch, who usually eschewed blatant political commentary, and who kept his social bromides well couched within the confines of usually fairly flagrant lapses of etiquette, including, you know, little things like murder. The Hitchcock-Hecht topicality continues into the first scene of the film, where we see Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) watching her father's trial for treason, and soon find out it's because he's been accused of being a Nazi spy. It's perhaps only fair to point out that Hitch's wartime output as a whole was significantly more tied to its time than the rest of his oeuvre, as Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur and especially Lifeboat (not to mention Aventure Malgache and Bon Voyage, his two French propaganda films) indubitably prove. But somehow Notorious seems to be more "ripped from the headlines" than most other Hitchcock films, and that propensity is established from the film's first moments. What's also quite interesting with regard to Hitch's usual modus operandi with regard to his icy cool, collected blonde goddess leading ladies is how initially unlikable Alicia is, something that continues through her first couple of scenes with Devlin (Cary Grant), a spymaster who wants to use Alicia's supposed Nazi street cred to place her in a Nazi enclave in Rio de Janeiro. Somewhat surprisingly, at about the time we start to really like Alicia, Devlin becomes less and less likable, one of the oddest plot arcs in any Hitchcock outing. Notorious is also an exceptional film in the Hitchcock canon for its really rather odd love triangle. Devlin "places" Alicia in the hands of Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), a Nazi sympathizer living in Rio who it turns out has a stash of uranium at his disposal. What's so peculiar about this Hecht formulation and Hitchcock's expert treatment of it is that Sebastian actually is head over heels in love with Alicia, while Devlin seems more and more churlish, despite the fact that by the time he and Alicia arrive in Rio, prior to her meeting Sebastian, the two are obviously more than merely friends. That makes this one of the oddest "love stories" in Hitchcock's long output. Instead of the typical bantering couple that was a Hitchcock staple in everything from The 39 Steps to The Lady Vanishes to North by Northwest to, in a way, The Birds, we instead have a peculiar triangle where the supposed "villain" of the piece, Sebastian, is actually more sympathetic, at least with regard to his relationship with Alicia, than is the ostensible "hero," Devlin. But Notorious is a film which consistently defies expectations, probably one of the reasons it has attained such incredible luster in the already obviously incredibly lustrous oeuvre of Hitch's. Putting aside the vagaries of plot and character for a moment, look at how quietly innovative Hitchcock is in several key sequences. While Bergman gets a traditional "movie star" introduction, with a gaggle of press awaiting the entrance of some mysterious woman (who of course turns out to be Bergman), pay close attention to how Hitch frames Cary Grant's entrance. Could it be that the creative forces behind AMC's Mad Men took note of how Hitchcock spends literally minutes filming the back of Grant's head (in silhouette, no less), and then, a scene later, actually starts again at his leading man's back, slowly dollying around until we finally get a peek at that famous cleft-chinned mug (and even then only in three-quarters profile). The most talked about scene in Notorious is no doubt the huge crane shot which occurs about an hour into the film, after Alicia has married Sebastian (perhaps if only to spite Devlin), but at a point where she is still willingly working with the United States government to figure out what Sebastian and his Nazi cronies are up to in the land of Samba and Carnaval. She's come to realize some sort of secret is lurking in Sebastian's vast wine cellar, and she has secreted away Sebastian's key to the vault (an incredibly tense scene in and of itself). Here Hitch starts at the top of a gargantuan sweeping staircase, panning slowly around to reveal the glittering party guests far below and then, rather incredibly, he slowly but surely vaults in toward Alicia and Sebastian, who are standing in the center of an impressive portico. The camera continues moving in even further to a startlingly clear close-up of Alicia's hand, which is holding the key. It's an incredible tour de force and one completely independent of flashy editing, something that sometimes plays at least a part in defining Hitchcock's inimitable style (think of the montage aspect of the Psycho shower scene for probably the best example of this tendency). But aside from pure technique (and it's here in spades, if subtly at times), Notorious is one of the best examples of how completely sly Hitchcock was at introducing a certain amount of subterfuge, even anarchy, into what appears to be a typically structured spy thriller. Think about it for a moment: Devlin is more or less pimping Alicia to Sebastian to gain access to some sort of secret, and, let's face it, for whatever reason, Alicia isn't all that upset about it. (She may be upset that Devlin pretends not to love her, but in terms of "playing" with Sebastian, as she so delicately puts it, she seems game enough). And the Freudian aspects of Sebastian's relationship with his domineering mother are especially fascinating, coming as they do right after Hitchcock's "psychoanalysis" film, Spellbound. One of Notorious' greatest achievements is how spectacularly it skews conventional filmic wisdom, at least with regard to how a love story should play out if nothing else. The fact that Hitchcock and Hecht frame it all in a rather exciting espionage format is just the icing on a very delicious, multi-layered cake. Cameo: Notorious - 1946 - 1:04:44 - At the big party in Claude Rains's mansion, drinking champagne and then quickly departing. Cast Notes: Cary Grant (Devlin), Ingrid Bergman (Alicia Huberman), Claude Rains (Alexander Sebastian), Louis Calhern (Paul Prescott), Leopoldine Konstantin (Mme. Sebastian [as Madame Konstantin]), Reinhold Schünzel (Dr. Anderson [as Reinhold Schunzel]), Moroni Olsen (Walter Beardsley), Ivan Triesault (Eric Mathis), Alex Minotis (Joseph), Wally Brown (Mr. Hopkins), Charles Mendl (Commodore [as Sir Charles Mendl]), Ricardo Costa (Dr. Barbosa), Eberhard Krumschmidt (Hupka), Fay Baker (Ethel). IMDb Rating (04/05/14): 8.2/10 from 56,542 users Top 250: #199 IMDb Rating (11/10/13): 8.1/10 from 52,952 users Top 250: #172 IMDb Rating (04/01/12): 8.2/10 from 40,288 users Top 250: #159 IMDb Rating (10/21/01): 8.2/10 from 3,913 users Top 250: #126
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