193. Notorious (1946)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

Daughter of German Spy gets hired by American Intelligence to investigate some boys in Rio. She marries one of them to keep her cover and when he discovers she is a spy he and his mother attempt to poison her. Cary Grant saves the day.

Review

Not a film about Mr. B.I.G. or a Duran Duran album and single, Notorious is another work by the master of suspense, Hitchcock. And it is actually a pretty good one albeit with a couple of faults.

The film starts much too slowly, Ingrid Bergman really does not play a girl of loose morals really well, but eventually her character is subdued by circumstances and she comes into her own. Cary Grant is fabulous as always and the film does pick up pace after Ingrid marries Claude Rains. From then on the tension does not let up.

In the end the slow start builds up nicely to a pretty great ending, which is so subdued that it leaves a lot to the imagination. And that is a thing I admire about these old film, they knew when to say 'That's a wrap'. There are no useless epilogues, no exposition for those too dumb to realise what happens next, these are films that trust their audience to know where the character go to after the curtain is drawn, thank you.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Critics have noted a "beverage motif" that runs throughout the picture: at the beginning of the film, Alicia is portrayed as a dipsomaniac and bottles and glasses are prominent in many scenes; later, Alicia and Devlin discover uranium in wine bottles in Sebastian's cellar; finally, Sebastian and his mother attempt to kill Alicia by poisoning her coffee.

The MacGuffin in this film is uranium, which Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht originally chose to use before the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. In his book-length interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock alleged that he was under FBI surveillance for several months because of the uranium reference. In the same interview, Hitchcock said that the original producer of Notorious, David O. Selznick was overbudget on his Duel in the Sun (1946), and so sold Hitchcock, Hecht's script, and the two stars to RKO as a package for $500,000 (Truffaut/Hitchcock, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance, a signature occurrence in all of his films, takes place at the big party in Sebastian's mansion. Hitchcock is seen knocking back a glass of champagne and then quickly departing, about 60 minutes into the film.

Notorious to Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani... trust Youtube, by the way the complete film is on youtube: