Notorious (1946) - film review

Shortly after her father is arrested on a charge of treason, Alicia Huberman is recruited by an American government agent, Devlin, to infiltrate a Nazi spy ring in Rio de Janeiro.   The chief suspect is the successful businessman Alex Sebastian, a friend of Alicia’s father.  Alicia soon discovers that Sebastian has always loved her and has no option but to accept his proposal of marriage.  Playing the attentive wife, Alicia quickly uncovers the racket Sebastian is involved in, but Sebastian’s matriarchal mother sees through her subterfuge and decides that she must die...

Deliciously quintessential Hitchcock, Notorious is not only one of the director’s most popular films, it is unquestionably among his finest.  The star billing of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman is the film’s main attraction, but it is Hitchcock’s masterful (and slightly sadistic) telling of a complex intrigue of romance and betrayal which makes it a classic.  It ranks alongside Strangers on a Train, Psycho and Vertigo as one of the handful of Hitchcock films that every film enthusiast should see at least once, not just to appreciate the genius of Hitchcock’s technique, but simply for their sheer enjoyment value.

The film features the most well-known (you might say: notorious) example of Hitchcock’s famous MacGuffins – the covert shipment of uranium in vintage wine bottles.  A MacGuffin is the term that Hitchcock gave to a plot device which had little relevance to the narrative and served merely to allow other things to happen, rather like a catalyst in a chemical reaction.  The narrative core of Notorious is not the tangled spy intrigue but the somewhat twisted amorous relationship portrayed by Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.  Whilst the two main characters in the drama are obviously attracted to one another, their emotional flaws and past experiences provide an obstacle to any kind of deep romantic entanglement.  The espionage thriller part of the narrative may provide some of the tension, but the real drama and suspense lies elsewhere – in the uncertainty over how the relationship of Grant and Bergman will pan out.

This is the second time Ingrid Bergman worked with Hitchcock.  She had previously appeared in his 1945 film Spellbound and would later star in Under Capricorn (1949).  Cary Grant is perhaps the Hollywood star who is most associated with Hitchcock, appearing in no fewer than four of his films, including the immensely popular North by Northwest (1959).  Both Bergman and Grant turn in exemplary performances in Notorious, although their on-screen rapport is anything but conventional for a Hollywood romance.  Beneath a thin veil of tenderness there’s a hint of viciousness and raw carnality that suggests something disturbing, a mutual sadomasochistic dependency.   This contrasts with the behaviour of the film’s principal villain – superbly played by Claude Rains – who has control of his baser qualities and who carries himself with the most exquisite charm and sincerity, bringing a nice touch of moral ambiguity into the drama.   Rains’s character is another of Hitchcock’s recurring motifs, a man who allows his domineering mother to drive him towards a very dark path – the path that would one day lead to the Bates Motel and Hitchcock’s most notorious film...

© James Travers 2008

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