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| Director Alfred Hitchcock |
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| Hitchcock with Ingrid Bergman and costume designer Edith Head |
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| Hitchcock and Bergman on the set |
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| in London |
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| Hitchcock and Bergman with Cary Grant |
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| celebrating Cary Grant's 42nd birthday |
NOTORIOUS A USA (102 mi) 1946 d: Alfred Hitchcock
The death of his mother, the apparently maternal relationship he had with his wife Alma, and the crush he’d developed on Ingrid Bergman “all released a flood of conflicting feelings that made Notorious not only possible but necessary... [it was] the artistic rendition of an inner life that might have exploded if denied expression.” —The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, by Donald Spoto (594 pages), 1983
Arguably Ingrid Bergman’s greatest performance, developing a personal rapport with director Alfred Hitchcock, where the playfulness of the opening and the midriff-exposing zebra-print outfit she wears is a stark contrast from the grim territory of where this film goes. Among the most extraordinary actresses of all-time, where her private life to leave her success in Hollywood to work with Roberto Rossellini in Italy for Stromboli (1950), Europa '51 (1952), and Journey to Italy (1954), making five films in all, entering into a scandalous affair with the married director, eventually getting married and having three children with him, was as dramatic as anything happening onscreen, as not only was she beautiful and intelligent, but more than anything, she had a conscience, wanting to make films that reflected that. Her work was more important than the money, something rare in artists working today, wanting to be part of the Italian neorealism movement, making films that pondered issues of complex psychology, as seeing Rossellini’s OPEN CITY (1946) was an experience that changed her life, suddenly open to the spread of realism in world cinema. You don’t think of Hitchcock as a political director, yet this film falls into that territory, a remarkably modern story, diving into wartime espionage, romance, and suspense, using a lurid premise where government agent Cary Grant persuades Bergman into infiltrating a WWII Nazi spy ring, a film where a monstrous demand is made on the heroine in order to achieve a political objective. In order to satisfy J. Edgar Hoover’s objections of disparaging depictions of FBI personnel, the FBI agents were changed to the more generic term of government agents. If neo-realism consistently engenders the structure of anxiety into the structure of the plot, then Hitchcock could accentuate the suspense factor. According to François Truffaut, who published a 1962 book of interviews with Hitchcock about all his films, NOTORIOUS represents “the very quintessence of Hitchcock.” Reuniting the team of Ingrid Bergman and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ben Hecht from Hitchcock’s psychoanalytic drama SPELLBOUND (1945), while also bringing over Claude Rains from Ingrid Bergman Tribute: Casablanca (1942), with producer David O. Selznick selling his studio to RKO, while allowing Hitchcock to produce the film himself. According to Selznick’s biographer, David Thomson, he was barred from visiting the set or seeing the rushes, where the legendary producer’s absence may explain why this film is as good as it is, as he wasn’t there to interfere and ruin it. Hitchcock, in particular, was happy to be out from under his seven-year contract, which he described as being “held in slavery,” becoming the first American movie the filmmaker could really call his own, featuring psychologically complex and solidly developed characters. What Hitchcock persistently examines in his best films are the ways an audience can be manipulated in and out of morally ambiguous situations, with the audience feeling threatened, suffering along with the protagonists, as the story plays with the audience’s sympathies, exhibiting exceptional domestic psychology, a resourceful use of silence, and a strong sense of place, while the overall pessimism veers into film noir territory, as our capacity for inhumanity is the engine that drives this picture. The complexity and technical mastery of the filmmaking represented a turning point of Hitchcock’s career, marking his stylistic maturity, a time in his legendary career when he finally came into his own. The story may have drawn inspiration from the short story The Song of the Dragon by John Taintor Foote which had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post in November 1921, The Song of the Dragon : Foote, John Taintor, 1881-1950, where a theatrical producer is approached by federal agents during the war who want his assistance in recruiting a young actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs in order to get hold of valuable information.
Shooting began just a month after the war ended, blending a compelling spy mission with a romantic love story, set in postwar Miami Beach, when the threat of Nazis was still present in viewer’s minds, opening with a court finding John Huberman guilty of treason as a Nazi sympathizer, sentenced to 20 years in prison, with his daughter Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), a German naturalized citizen, seen coolly walking out of the courtroom afterwards avoiding the press. Cutting to a house party, Alicia Huberman is drinking heavily with friends and is quite the hostess, passing drinks around, speaking glib dialogue, revealing a cynical side of the actress we’ve simply never seen, standing out from all the other Hitchcock actresses, kind of a spoiled socialite with a scandalous reputation, exhibiting a loose-living, wild and carefree nature, where she’s simply the life of an otherwise dreary party, where it’s clear right from the outset that she is the emotional center, the magnet that draws our attention. But as guests start to leave (some passed out on the couch) what she describes as “a perfectly hideous party,” one lone figure remains, seen only in shadow as a silhouetted stranger with his back to the camera, with Hitchcock adding an aura of mystery to this unseen character, who is constantly observing, yet Alicia calls him a party crasher and says she likes him, attracted, no doubt, by his handsome face and debonair manner, eventually identified as Devlin (played with minimalist perfection by Cary Grant) after everyone else has gone. The two are nothing less than brilliant together, every nuance, every facial gesture, and every witty phrase, where their relationship has a real spark, like a reiteration of Grant and Katharine Hepburn in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY (1938), yet somehow both were overlooked for Academy Award nominations. With her warmth and vulnerability on full display, she invites him to take a drive, despite the fact she’s obviously tipsy, where her drunken joyride driving, speeding while dangerously swirling around the road, “I want to make it 80 and wipe that grin off your face. I don’t like gentlemen who grin at me,” is an attempt to get a reaction out of him, like fear, but it’s more of an alert that something is deeply troubling inside. When a police officer stops her, Devlin calmly offers some credentials that quickly resolves the situation, which infuriates her, believing he’s a cop, as she has no love lost for the police, suggesting the way they treated her father remains a sore spot, Notorious (1946) Movie Clip - Car Driving scene YouTube (3:06). Punching her in the face and knocking her out to get himself behind the wheel is a scene that simply doesn’t sit well today. Yet when she awakens in the morning in full hangover mode, he’s still there, though upside down and out of focus in a first-person shot. Tired, unkempt, and with her hair down, for these few moments she’s perhaps more relatable to viewers than any other role, disgusted with herself, and with him, yet she’s completely believable - - not some glamorous movie star. Yet behind the mask, she’s an intelligent, sensible, and powerful young woman, but the discovery of her father’s secrets causes her to have trust issues, losing all self-respect, developing a self-destructive side and a reputation for promiscuity, while she has to overcome her tainted past as a “notorious” woman and find her place in the patriarchal society of the 1940’s. Devlin appears to offer her that opportunity, as she’s enlisted to spy on a ring of Nazi exiles in postwar Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, with Hitchcock sustaining their relationship with great sensitivity and insight. While it’s a dangerous mission, more than a little out of her league, the connection to her infamous father leads them to believe the Nazis would trust her. While essentially posing as a love story, NOTORIOUS is as frightening an exploration of sexual and emotional abuse, as well as political manipulation, as you can find in an American film. Part of its fascination is the complex shift in power dynamics, continually changing the narrational point of view, moving from dominance and helplessness by use of subjective camera shots, making the tension personal, then transferring it to the audience, as the heroine must suffer before she can redeem herself through self-sacrifice. Hitchcock is not for everyone, as many feminists consider his persistent depictions of victimized women to be indicative of blatant misogyny, yet there is also a subversive, oftentimes even progressive, approach to gender evident throughout Hitchcock’s work, especially here, where the melodrama is a dangerous place, a dark, loveless, and brutal world where the viewer is an emotional accomplice to the unfolding crimes.
Alicia is the enigma, the missing piece of the entire film whose code must be cracked to make sense of it all, yet after the imprisonment of her father, who immediately commits suicide in his cell, she’s completely alone in the world, with no one to really talk to about her deeper problems. The contrast between her father’s values and her own couldn’t be more starkly different, as she’s a believer in the American ideals, feeling guilty about her father’s crimes and tries to make up for them by punishing herself, yet Devlin believes she will make a convincing undercover agent. While the mission he ultimately enlists her for is to worm her way into the household of a nest of Nazi spies in order to find out who they are and what they are up to, it gets more complicated when they have a torrid love affair before she is assigned, but as soon as his superiors, led by spy chief Prescott (Louis Calhern), get involved in organizing the specific details and the plan is about to go into effect, Devlin takes a back seat, as love could compromise the mission and actually endanger her life, though he’s the agent she will continue to report to, with his character exhibiting ominous undertones, which have deepened even more since his role in Suspicion (1941). By allowing his superiors to make all the significant decisions, Devlin is heartsick and out of sorts, as they have no real interest in Alicia, who is stereotypically viewed as an immoral woman who drinks heavily with a sexually promiscuous past, showing all the signs of a Fallen woman, a perfect example of what happens when a woman’s sexual history frames the totality of her identity, yet she’s not what any of them think. Hitchcock reveals a marked skepticism about the ethics of government agents, viewed as a group of opportunistic and unscrupulous officials, a move that is both surprising and daring considering the fact the film was made at the end of the Second World War, a time when patriotism was in high gear. Devlin and Alicia are both feeling lost for different reasons, while also extremely attracted to each other. Knowing the importance of the mission, Devlin hates the idea of sending her in there, and has a hard time living with himself, continuing to conceal his feelings, the embodiment of the emotionally repressed man, as he’s consumed by an overwhelming sense of guilt and self-loathing, playing aloof and treating her badly to cover up his own personal conflicts, while Alicia’s life abruptly changes, vowing to stop drinking, where her job is to ingratiate herself with a Nazi associate of her father’s in South America, a man who was once, and may still be, in love with her. Her assignment involves resuming a romance with a German agent in Rio, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains, who was nominated for an Oscar), a reserved and cautious man who is extremely human and personally sympathetic, yet ideologically evil, living in a chilly, luxurious mansion with a grand staircase along with his smothering mother (Austrian actress Madame Leopoldine Konstantin, one of prewar Germany’s greatest actresses, who is simply unforgettable in her only American movie appearance), holding regular meetings with his evil cabal, where her job is to infiltrate this circle of scientists, diplomats, and spies who congregate at his mansion, curiously introduced to them by a series of hand kisses, each one seen leering at her, smitten by her beauty. Yet when one of their group briefly questions what they’re doing, he is quickly eliminated as being a weak link. This is how they operate. Once Alicia enters their lair, greeted by an almost spectral presence of Madame Konstantin, the film turns into a claustrophobic chamber drama, where the suffocating interiors have an overwhelming influence, much like the giant Gothic mansion in Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). Essentially this amounts to a love triangle, with both men belonging to powerful political organizations, where the intense drama forces viewers to constantly change their feelings about the three leads, while it’s also a sumptuous romance between Bergman and Grant, sharing what was at that time the screen’s longest close-up kiss, Notorious (1946) -- (Movie Clip) Strange Love Affair YouTube, broken up into a series of erotically charged short kisses and teasing small talk, a cleverly innovative way to avoid the Hays Code censors forbidding “lustful” kisses that last more than three seconds. As an undercover operative, Alicia meets her handler Devlin at a Rio race track, providing the details of who she is watching, reminding him of the ultimate sacrifice she is making by sleeping with the enemy, which hits Devlin like a ton of bricks, as it only makes him angry at himself and her for agreeing to such an ethically-challenged idea and actually going through with it, until they are interrupted by a jealously suspicious Sebastian, Notorious (1946) -- (Movie Clip) My List Of Playmates - Turner ... YouTube (3:51). Among the more complicated relationships in movie history, both are extremely conflicted by the roles they play, deferring the personal for the professional, yet it keeps them both alert and on edge. Disappointed by Devlin’s indifference, she ends up marrying Sebastian, believing she has no other choice.
When Alicia suspects they’re keeping something secret in a locked wine cellar, with Sebastian holding the only key, they devise a plan to hold a fabulous dinner party, where Devlin can get himself on the invite list and she can find a way to get him the key, with Hitchcock turning up the cinematic tricks with one of the more clever shots in movie history, where the skill and precision that Hitchcock employs is exemplary, with a crane shot swooping down the stairs to the main floor as the camera zooms in on the key she’s holding in her hand, a scene that ends with Hitchcock’s cameo appearance quickly taking a glass of champagne from the table, Notorious - Key exchange scene YouTube (2:26). The suspense is only ratcheted up as they make their way down to the wine cellar where Devlin accidentally breaks a bottle, discovering black sand in several of the bottles, which is later discovered to be uranium ore, a key ingredient used in the making of nuclear weapons. It’s important to remember this was actually filmed a year before Hiroshima, a time when people had no idea about the significance of uranium. Sebastian discovers their absence from the party and finds them in the wine cellar, quickly concocting an explanation, which leads him to discover the missing key from his key ring, which is reattached the next morning. Returning to the cellar afterwards, he finds remnants of glass and sand from the broken bottle, knowing he’s been compromised, and that he’s married to an American agent. Discussing the matter with his monstrously controlling mother, she devises a vile plan to have Alicia “die slowly” from arsenic poisoning, which leaves her too weak to defend herself once she realizes the horrible game she’s gotten herself into, suddenly becoming life-threatening, where she’s viewed as little more than disposable goods, A Scene from NOTORIOUS YouTube (2:01), like a gloomy, nightmarish sequence out of Polanski’s horrifying ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968). Confined to her room with the telephone removed, she is at their mercy, yet Devlin, who incidentally asked to be reassigned to Spain after the reported marriage, suspects something is up as she appears sick and frail, which he mistakenly believes is that she’s returned to drinking, then goes missing altogether, where she keeps missing their appointments, yet he fails to grasp that he loves her until he realizes something has gone terribly wrong, sensing her mortal danger, and that he's in danger of losing her for good. Gorgeously shot by Ted Tetzlaff in luminous monochrome, tinged in dark tones, creating an elaborate choreography where even the most minute gestures are charged with eroticism and violent potential, Hitchcock has crafted an emotionally tortuous love story, with the stars looking and acting their best, where the evolution of Alicia’s character from a carefree woman with no purpose to a highly skilled operative is at the center of the picture, where she generates such an erotic intensity to the screen, subverting the detective role of male film noir counterparts like Bogart, Mitchum, or Glenn Ford, bringing such an electric screen magnetism and personal intimacy to the role. Hitchcock places the blame of violence against women on the male abusers and the patriarchal system which enables them. Alicia is a complex figure who boldly resists that patriarchal structure, yet Devlin must prove that he’s evolved as well, developing a more compassionate understanding of the deadly predicament that he sent her into. The finale is extremely unnerving, with silence punctuating the suspense of a sweeping romantic gesture, as Devlin sneaks into the upstairs room and rescues her in plain sight of the invited guests, who wonder what Sebastian is up to, allowing his wife to be carried out by another man in a long descent down the stairway, as clearly things are not right, pointing an accusatory finger at Sebastian, who will have to answer for this, poetic justice perhaps, where she’s being rescued from much more than a gang of spies, leading to a passionate, protecting embrace in a riveting finale, Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious - Final Scene YouTube (7:56). Along with Shadow of a Doubt (1943), this is a nasty piece of work that reaches the highest echelon of Hitchcock films, among his richest and most seductive efforts, a perfect combination of stylization and simplicity, perhaps his most fully achieved film at this point. While Vertigo (1958) is generally regarded as Hitchcock’s most critically acclaimed film, yet the star power of the leads in this film suggests more perfect casting, more compelling performances by Bergman and Grant, in combination with Claude Rains, who by the end is actually a sympathetic Nazi, and let’s not forget the hovering presence of Madame Konstantin, who are much more emotionally and dramatically impactful than Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, though the self-obsessed psychological aspect may go to VERTIGO. NOTORIOUS, in fact, may be Hitchcock’s greatest achievement.
Notorious (1946) Film In English | Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman ... HD version, YouTube (1:39:09)
Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin video essay on a scene from Hitchcock’s Notorious (6:27)
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