Alfred
Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many
of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading
man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World
War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in
many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a
huge influence on John Woo’s Mission
Impossible 2, which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of
course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together.
Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes,
which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960
during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is
Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than
explosions in Notorious, no offense
to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly lasts two and half minutes, but is
actually a series of kisses because the two actors had to disengage every few
seconds in order to get around the pesky band that the Production Code had at
the time on kisses longer than three seconds. Homework aside, the film remains
a highly enjoyable time at the movies no matter your age. There is a scene that
drew a couple of laughs from my fellow students when the villain’s mother
ominously lights a cigarette after being told a crucial bit of information. That’s
a scene that says evil mommy is going to get to work.
Cary Grant, one
of Hollywood’s greatest leading men, is half of the film’s romantic couple,
T.R. Devlin. An agent for the United States government, Devlin is tasked with
approaching Alicia Huberman, played by Ingrid Bergman, a Swedish actress who
became one of the world’s biggest movie stars having also starred in classics
such as Casablanca. With two names
like that in one movie Hitchcock could have had a mediocre story and possibly
still have a hit, but luckily he and writer Ben Hecht went into production with
a solid story.
Alicia is the
daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, but has no sympathy for her father’s ideals
or the ideals of his friends. Unfortunately that is exactly what the American
government needs her to fake in order to find some of her father’s more
dangerous friends who have escaped Nazi Germany and are now hiding in Brazil.
Devlin manages to convince her to take the job and together they are off to
sunny Rio de Janeiro, where it doesn’t take a long time for them to fall in
love. Unbeknownst to Devlin, Alicia’s assignment is not limited to just
locating a few Nazis, but also going out with Nazi Alex Sebastian (Claude
Rains) who used to have strong feelings for her. Devlin tells his superiors she
is not up to the task of being so deep undercover, but they are confident in her
notorious reputation as a seductress.
Alicia does prove
to be effective at her job, going as far as marrying Sebastian, much to the
Devlin’s chagrin. She moves into Sebastian’s luxurious home where she gains
information about the location of dangerous material the Nazis are hiding while
Sebastian remains clueless about her true feelings for him. The one person she
cannot convince is Sebastian’s mother Anna (Leopoldine Konstantin) who is not
only devoted to her son’s cause, but is highly suspicious of the new lady in his
life. A Nazi mother who is smart and suspicious is not as scary as the “mother”
in Hitchcock’s other masterpiece, Psycho,
but it still means bad news for Alicia.
There are no
gunfights, explosions, or car chases in Notorious,
but there is a hefty dose of tension as the walls close in on Alicia, and
eventually on Sebastian as well when his Nazi colleagues begin to question his
abilities. The final scenes involve characters trying to avoid certain death as
they make their way down a flight of stairs that is impossibly long, but the
audience is so fixated on the moment they don’t care about whether or not it
makes sense. It is not as flashy as modern-day spy thrillers, but this film is
still the work of a director firing on all cylinders.
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