I couldn’t be more proud of my readership for kicking into gear over the past couple days. Speaking of readership, I forget if I’ve named you all. Mr. Menick has his VCA, what should I have? The Eaters? Suggestions would be appreciated in the comments section.
Continuing along my delayed Hitchcock kick, I was inspired to finally watch Notorious by my discussion with the aforementioned seasoned blogger about Hitchcock during some downtime at a certain debate tournament at which a certain less-seasoned blogger made a certain sum of money for judging a certain activity. He brought up that Notorious certainly deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as Rear Window, Psycho and Strangers on a Train (were those the three?), and was probably above any breath that involved Vertigo and North by Northwest. Rope, I think we agreed, was probably not even part of the same respiratory system (in a…good way?). So that pushed me over the edge into seeing a movie I was already planning on seeing.
So that was an incredibly roundabout way of simply saying that Notorious, directed by Mr. Alfredonius Hitchcock himself and written by some guy named Ben Hecht, (Just kidding. You can’t be considered just “some guy” when you write two movies like Notorioius and Gilda in the same year.) is the movie I’m reviewing this time. The absolute first thing that jumps out at me about this movie is the unique and interesting way it uses three of the biggest actors of the time: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. Well, that’s more fair to say of the first two than of Rains – we’ve established even within the humble confines of this blog that Mr. Rains was a chameleon; a god among character actors, who manages to make all of his roles complicated and interesting.
But enough hero worship of Claude; we’ll discuss him more specifically to this movie later, along with the other biggies.
Notorious is the story of Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a German-American convicted of war crimes committed during World War II who is asked by the United States Federal Government to work undercover in Brazil trying to catch some of her father’s associates doing…bad things. Her liaison, TR Devlin (Grant), whom she meets at a party she threw to drink until she can’t feel anymore in reaction to her father’s conviction, is the one who introduces her to the mission. She accepts after being reminded how much she loves America (and thus hates Nazis), deciding to abandon a family friend who wanted to take her on a boat cruise of the world, I think. While in Rio (by the sea-o) de Janeiro, awaiting assignment and generally just hanging out, guess what the pair do? Give up? They fall in love.
But when they get the assignment, they find that Alicia has to woo an old acquaintance who is all kinds of creepily in love with her in order to get information. He’s Alex Sebastien, played by Claude Rains, and he’s a former Nazi socialite. It would be pretty stupid to do plot summary from that point forward, for a number of reasons.
As far as Grant goes in this movie, it’s not the only time he was in a Hitchcock movie (I count three: this, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest), and though I haven’t seen To Catch a Thief, I know that in North by Northwest, Grant also has moments where he (Devlin) vilifies his love interest for being unfaithful to him while in the line of duty. But here, what’s interesting is he never even gets attached to Alicia (Bergman) to begin with. He doesn’t trust her because of her history, even though he falls for her, and his exchange with Alicia about her seduction of Sebastien is less about feeling hurt and betrayed, and more about taking sick satisfaction in twisting the knife over Alicia’s guilt about her mission. The racetrack scene is just fascinating, and what happens immediately after is positively Hithcockian (duh). But that’s too spoilable to talk about, regrettably. You’ll just have to be satisfied with me telling you it rules.
Bergman’s Alicia character is an incredibly compelling one, and for my money it blows her performance in Casablanca out of the water because Alicia actually has depth – emotions that go beyond “I’m conflicted.” This is an incredibly well-developed and fully-realized character, and I was so impressed by her subtlety of expression.
Claude Rains, though, is the absolute top dog here. You’re introduced to him as Alex Sebastien, a former Nazi before he ever steps on screen, so my feelings towards his every action were that everything was coated with this sinister, invisible layer. But the more I watched Alex around Alicia (which is 90% of his screen time), the more I came to realize that his feelings for her were sincere, despite his evildoings. In reflection, I feel that Rains lent such depth to his character that I could analyze it til the cows came home, and still be interested.
So this review has kind of turned into boot-licking, and I’m going to cut it off there. Just know that the strength of this movie is in the lead performances, possibly more than any other Hitchcock film.
I Ate My DVD Collection 