Saturday Night Cinema: Notorious

What a film. What a film! Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a masterpiece. It is as much a romance as it a spy thriller. Under the sublime direction of Alfred Hitchcock, it features exquisite performances by Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains in a romantic espionage. The chemistry between Bergman and Grant is electrifying. The love scense are so intense.

New York Times review by Bosley Crowther,  August 16, 1946

It is obvious that Alfred Hitchcock, Ben Hecht and Ingrid Bergman
form a team of motion-picture makers that should be publicly and heavily
endowed. For they were the ones most responsible for "Spellbound," as
director, writer and star, and now they have teamed together on another
taut, superior film. It goes by the name of "Notorious" and it opened
yesterday at the Music Hall. With Cary Grant as an additional asset, it
is one of the most absorbing pictures of the year.

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For Mr. Hecht has written and Mr. Hitchcock has directed in brilliant
style a romantic melodrama which is just about as thrilling as they
come—velvet smooth in dramatic action, sharp and sure in its characters
and heavily charged with the intensity of warm emotional appeal. As a
matter of fact, the distinction of "Notorious" as a film is the
remarkable blend of love story with expert "thriller" that it
represents.

Actually, the "thriller" elements are familiar and commonplace,
except in so far as Mr. Hitchcock has galvanized them into life. They
comprise the routine ingredients of a South American Nazi-exile gang, an
American girl set to spy upon it and a behind-the-scenes American
intelligence man. And the crux of the melodramatic action is the peril
of the girl when the nature of her assignment is discovered by one of
the Nazis whom she has wed.

But the rare quality of the picture is in the uncommon character of
the girl and in the drama of her relations with the American
intelligence man. For here Mr. Hecht and Mr. Hitchcock have done a
forthright and daring thing; they have made the girl, played by Miss
Bergman, a lady of notably loose morals. She is the logically cynical
daughter of a convicted American traitor when she is pressed into this
job of high-echelon spying by the confident espionage man. The
complication is that she and the latter fall passionately and genuinely
in love before the demands of her assignment upon her seductive charms
are revealed. And thus the unpleasant suspicions and the lacerated
feelings of the two as they deal with this dangerous major problem form
the emotional drama of the film.

Obviously, that situation might seem slightly old-fashioned, too. But
Mr. Hecht and Mr. Hitchcock have here treated it with sophistication
and irony. There is nothing unreal or puritanical in their exposure of a
frank, grown-up amour. And Miss Bergman and Mr. Grant have played it
with surprising and disturbing clarity. We do not recall a more
conspicuous—yet emotionally delicate—love scene on the screen than one
stretch of billing and cooing that the principals play in this film.
Yet, withal, there is rich and real emotion expressed by Miss Bergman in
her role, and the integrity of her nature as she portrays it is the
prop that holds the show.

Mr. Grant, who is exceptionally solid, is matched for acting honors
in the cast by Claude Rains as the Nazi big-wig, to whom Miss Bergman
becomes attached. Mr. Rains' shrewd and tense performance of this
invidious character is responsible for much of the anguish that the
situation creates. Reinhold Schunzel and Ivan Triesault are good, too,
as Nazi worms, and a splendid touch of chilling arrogance as a German
mother is added by Madame Konstantin. Louis Calhern and Moroni Olsen are
fine in minor American roles.

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Check up another smash hit for a fine and experienced team.

On the stage at the Music Hall is a revue spectacle entitled
"Colorama," featuring Estelle Sloan, Joyce Renee, Bob Williams, Rabana
Hasburgh and Charles Laskey, the Corps de Ballet, Glee Cluo and
Rockettes.

NOTORIOUS; screen play by Ben Hecht; directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock for RKO-Radio Pictures. At the Radio City Music Hall.

Devlin . . . . . Cary Grant

Alicia Huberman . . . . . Ingrid Bergman

Alexander Sebastian . . . . . Claude Rains

Paul Prescott . . . . . Louis Calhern

Mme. Sebastian . . . . . Madame Konstantin

"Dr. Anderson" . . . . . Reinhold Schunzel

Walter Beardsley . . . . . Moroni Olsen

Eric Mathis . . . . . Ivan Triesault

Joseph . . . . . Alex Minotis

Mr. Hopkins . . . . . Wally Brown

Commodore . . . . . Sir Charles Mendl