NOTORIOUS (MGM, 1946) D: Alfred Hitchcock, w/ Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman. Rating: NNNNN Blu-ray package: NNNNN Rating: NNNNN
The brilliance of Notorious lies in the way Alfred Hitchcock merges the love story and the spy story and wrings equal amounts of suspense from both.
Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), a promiscuous drunk, is approached by Devlin (Cary Grant), an FBI agent who wants her to go to Rio to seduce Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), her old acquaintance and Nazi sympathizer who’s involved in something nasty. Alicia falls for Devlin, but he’s frightened of women and manipulative. But Alexander genuinely loves her.
Grant and Bergman are top-level movie stars playing against type, he the graceful leading man in romantic comedies, she the embodiment of wholesomeness. Rains is a character actor. All three are at the top of their game, and Hitchcock builds in lots of telling reaction shots that stress the characters’ complexities.
In his commentary, film professor Drew Casper takes a very detailed look at Hitchcock’s methods and concerns, from the need for multi-layered characters, through working with writer Ben Hecht, to creating the rig for the spectacular ballroom shot. Elsewhere, there’s a good discussion of the spy genre and Notorious’s place in it and, in Rick Jewell’s commentary, a history of RKO Studios.
EXTRAS Two commentaries, retrospective making-of doc, Hitchcock spy movies appreciation doc, Hitchcock audio interviews, Notorious radio version, more. B&w. English audio and subtitles.
