Grant, Bergman, Rio. This week’s Disc Dive treats us to all three with Notorious.
Title: Notorious
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Premiered: August 15, 1946 (New York City)
Runtime: 1 hour 41 minutes
Disc Format: Criterion Blu-ray
Miss Alicia Huberman’s (Ingrid Bergman) father is found guilty of being a German spy. She’s then recruited by Devlin (Cary Grant) to go undercover in Rio de Janeiro and infiltrate a group of Germans who were paying her father.
Alicia resists at first, especially once she finds out Devlin is a federal agent. But eventually, he’s able to convince her by playing a recording of a conversation between her and her father. Unbeknownst to her, the government has had her bungalow tapped for months. On the recording, she argues with her father, saying that she loves this country (the USA).
While in Rio de Janeiro, Devlin and Alicia become smitten with one another. When details of her assignment make their way to Devlin, he’s not comfortable with it. She’s supposed to seduce one of her father’s associates, Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains). Adding insult to injury, Devlin is told Sebastian used to be in love with Alicia.
The deeper they get into the assignment, the more Devlin struggles with letting someone he loves slip further into an undercover operation.
Claude Rains may not be top-billed, but he very much deserves recognition for his role as Alex Sebastian. There are a few instances throughout the film where he almost has you legitimately feeling sorry for Alex. Grant and Bergman are truly wonderful together. Here we have Grant playing against his usual charming type and instead bringing a cold and, at times, indifferent demeanor to Devlin. In sitting down to write this, I realized the only other film of Bergman’s that I’ve seen is Casablanca. Clearly, I’ve got some homework to do.
Ben Hecht’s script is another of the film’s strong points. There may not be a lot of action on screen, but the dialogue is rich with action of its own. The script also creatively maneuvered around the Hays Code with clever dialogue that allowed the sexual connotations to be implied without ever being shown. For example, when Alicia tells Devlin “You can add Sebastian’s name to my list of playmates,” you know exactly what is being implied.
The cinematography is remarkable. The party at the beginning introduces Cary Grant, one of the biggest stars of the time, as just the back of someone’s head. The next morning we get Hitchcock taking small things and placing them front and center with the shot of the Alka-Seltzer. Then we get the 180 flip of the camera as Devlin walks into Alicia’s room. In Alex’s home, the oner that starts on the second level and lands on the lower level on a key in Alicia’s hands is another example of a small item becoming the focal point of a shot. It’s the same way we nervously follow a cup of coffee towards the end.
And probably the most famous moment is how Hitchcock staged and DP Ted Tetzlaff shot the extended kiss scene between Grant and Bergman while adhering to the Hays Code. Rather than a continuous kiss, there is a lot of canoodling and multiple short kisses.
While I don’t think I’d say this is my favorite Hitchcock film, it absolutely earns its place in the upper echelon.