Saturday Night Cinema: Notorious

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema feature delivers another film noir classic, Notorious, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, directed by film giant Alfred Hitchcock. And it is indeed one of his best. Naziphobia unleashed!

Love, morality and evil are given equal time in this Hitchcock thriller.

This
is the film, with “Casablanca,” that assures Ingrid Bergman’s immortality. She
plays a woman whose notorious reputation encourages U.S. agents to recruit her
to spy on Nazis in postwar Rio. And that reputation nearly gets her killed,
when the man she loves mistrusts her. His misunderstanding is at the center of
a plot in which all of the pieces come together with perfect precision, so that
two people walk down a staircase to their freedom, and a third person climbs
steps to his doom.

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Hitchcock
made the film in 1946, when the war was over but the Cold War was just
beginning. A few months later, he would have made the villains Communists, but
as he and Ben Hecht worked on the script, Nazis were still uppermost in their
minds. (An opening subtitle says: “Miami, Florida, 3:20 p.m., April 20,
1946”–admirably specific, but as unnecessary as the similarly detailed
information at the beginning of “Psycho.")

The
story stars Bergman as a patriotic American named Alicia Huberman, whose father
is a convicted Nazi spy. Alicia is known for drinking and apparent promiscuity,
and is recruited by an agent named Devlin (Cary Grant) to fly to Rio and
insinuate herself into the household of a spy ring led by Sebastian (Claude
Rains). Sebastian once loved her, and perhaps he still does; Devlin is
essentially asking her to share the spy's bed to discover his secrets. And this
she is willing to do, because by the time he asks her, she is in love–with
Devlin.

All
of these sexual arrangements are of course handled with the sort of subtle
dialogue and innuendo that Hollywood used to get around the production code.
There is never a moment when improper behavior is actually stated or shown, but
the film leaves no doubt. By the time all of the pieces are in place, we
actually feel more sympathy for Sebastian than for Devlin. He may be a spy but
he loves Alicia sincerely, while Devlin may be an American agent but has used
Alicia's love to force her into the arms of another man. (Roger Ebert) 

Bosley Crowther, NY Times film review, August 16, 1946:

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.

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

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Thomas Pellow

10 years ago

Another excellent, classic film choice.

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Fred

10 years ago

I agree. Movies like this I could watch many times. The current trashy movies I would not go to if you gave me free tickets. I just watched The Detective Story 1951 with Kirk Douglas. WHAT A GREAT MOVIE. When times were better in America

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ergerer

10 years ago

Haha, I urge you all to read “Perfidy” by Ben Hecht

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