Notorious
Amazon.co.uk Review
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s classics, this romantic thriller features a cast to die for: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains. Bergman plays the daughter of a disgraced father who is recruited by American agents to infiltrate a post-World War II spy ring in Brazil. Her control agent is Grant, who treats her with disdain while developing a deep romantic bond with her. Her assignment: to marry the suspected head of the ring (Rains) and get the goods on everyone involved. Danger, deceit, betrayal–and, yes, romance–all come together in a nearly perfect blend as the film builds to a terrific (and surprising) climax. Grant and Bergman rarely have been better. –Marshall Fine
Filmed in 1946, this was a truly sensational film upon its release, its a dramatic impact far stronger than what we experience now. Newspapers were publicizing the fact that major Nazi leaders had escaped to Brazil and other South American countries, and America’s use of the atomic bomb in Japan had made every American aware of the importance of uranium, also a plot element here. The work of spies was respected and considered crucial for America’s safety.
In this Hitchcock-directed film, Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, daughter of a Nazi spy convicted of treason. A young woman who has always played fast and loose, she is nevertheless recruited to go to Brazil to infiltrate her father’s Nazi network there, with Devlin (Cary Grant) as her agency contact. They fall in love as they await orders in Rio, but the stiff and formal Grant cannot bring himself to tell this “notorious” woman (“not a lady”) that he loves her. When she realizes that she will get much better information if she marries Nazi Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), Grant allows her to do this, meeting her periodically for agonizing updates. As Alicia uncovers increasingly important information related to the Nazi search for uranium, her own life is threatened.
Hitchcock’s camera work is extraordinary, with high-contrast scenes achieving maximum dramatic impact in black and white. He often places objects and people in the extreme foreground with the camera focused on the background, and he uses changes of lighting to emphasize changing moods or realizations by characters. The suspense builds to a crescendo, and when Grant and Bergman manage to get inside a locked wine cellar while Rains is approaching, the tension nears the breaking point.
Part of the suspense is psychological. Alicia’s life is nightmarish, as she shares a bedroom with someone she both fears and detests, while she herself is feared and detested by her husband’s manipulative mother (Leopoldine Konstantin), who calmly sits and embroiders throughout much of the film. Playing a fey, flighty, and “fallen” woman, Bergman is spontaneous, vibrantly alive, and expressive of every emotion, a marked contrast to the staid Grant, who plays the elegant and formal role for which he is justifiably famous. Rains, playing a Nazi, manages to evoke a certain sympathy because he is so vulnerable to Bergman and so dependent on his mother. One of Hitchcock’s best films, this study of a “notorious” woman belongs to Bergman, who dominates the film and brings it to life. Mary Whipple
Rating: 5 / 5
Notorious marks the first film in Hitchcock’s output which really hits the mark and still pushes at the boundaries now, over 50 years since its release.
On loan from his suffocative contract with David O. Selznick, the director turned out with RKO a practically flawless picture. It bears all the hallmarks of what we now consider a Hitchcock classic: It has Cary Grant. It has Ingrid Bergman. It has a pulpy (though not too pulpy) plot. It has interantional agents. It has a Macguffin. It even has a one word title!
Bergman plays the woman-with-a-history, and Grant is the detective trying to infiltrate a Nazi group. Bergman is his tool, and he persuades/pushes her into a marriage with Nazi sympathiser Claude Raines.
This central trio of characters is outstanding — the relationship between Bergman and Grant thoroughly believable and watertight, and Raines treads the line between threatening and weak immaculately.
Really a must-see, even after all these years. Includes excellent flourishes, including the much vaunted longest-ever screen kiss and the breathtaking bravura camera dolly down the stairs to Bergman’s concealed hand. The party sequence is one of the best in all of Hitchcock’s output.
From start to finish it is a joy — buy it, and buy it now.
Rating: 5 / 5
…this Hitchcock film has it all – Cary Grant as an amoral CIA agent, Ingrid Bergman as a (supposed) alcoholic floozy, Nazis plotting to come back to power – and they are all in Rio. It should be a rather florid mix, but Hitchcock brings it all into a tense and exciting film. Grant has rarely been better, using all his charisma to persuade a woman who is in love with him to sleep with a supposed Nazi to get information. Technically, the film is brilliant, with poisoned coffee cups looming hugely at the front of shots, and the shadows of the supposed poisoners wavering and merging into one. Personally, I think Cary Grant is one of the sexiest actors ever to be filmed and this film captures him at his best. A film you should definitely have in your collection.
Rating: 5 / 5
The fifteen pounds you spend on ‘Notorious’ may well be one of the best used fifteen pounds you ever spend. A fornight after having received it I had watched it ten times: it is a simply mesmerising film. Every element that makes a film good comes together in ‘Notorious’ to make it excellent.
It doesn’t fit into any of the ‘spy-film’ or ‘romance’ cliches: it’s utterly fresh and original. The script is very tight, the two strands – McGuffin and romance – coming together in the form of a scintillating love triangle, a series of agonising misunderstandings and an ending that is simultaneously so surprising and so _right_ that it will take your breath away.
Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant do wonderful work bringing the leads to life – she damaged, vulnerable and exposed, becomming more forlorn and isolated as the plot develops, he slightly morally ambiguous and painfully self-controlled. Watch them in the scene where Alicia takes Dev for a drive: magic! Claude Rains and Madame Konstantin as Alex and his mother lend stellar support, he the villain you pity more than hate and she a cold and jealous manipulator. The downward pan on Alex as he makes his confession to his mother tells you all you need to know, which brings us neatly onto the direction.
What with it being a Hitchcock film and all you expect it to be good, but this is brilliant. Neat little tricks like having Alicia stepping from the shadow into the light as Dev exposes her patriotism and keeping Dev’s back to a room so that when he breaks into the conversation his distress is palpable couple with major motifs that occur in later films: the coffee-cup view of Alicia echoed in ‘Spellbound’ and the pan from the top of the staircase to Alicia’s hand also seen in ‘Marnie’. Numerous pieces of symbolism – the lost bottle of champagne, Dev lending Alicia his scarf and she returning it when she has finally lost hope – add richness to the texture of the film and ensure that alhtough the editing is beautifully economic the film is never spare in sentiment or meaning. The longest screen kiss in history, although ridiculously chaste by modern standards, in nonetheless the most tender and erotic romance scene I’ve ever seen on film. And of course it is an incredibly suspenseful film, from Alicia’s first, ill-fated party right down to the abrupt ending.
‘Notorious’ is the first truly great film that Hitchcock made, indeed one of his best three in my opinion. Watch it if you like the stars, watch it if you like Hitchcock, watch it if you like tight scripting, watch it if you like well developed characters, watch it if you don’t like to be patronised by a film. Just watch it!
Rating: 5 / 5
ILLUSTRIOUS INGRID INVOKES IMMORTALITY –
IF there ever was a competition for the most magical screen pairing CARY GRANT-INGRID BERGMAN will win it hands down for their magical,enigmatic & magnetic chemistry which scorches the screen in this post-war espionage romance from the master of cinema who pays a homage to ethical art in this tale of treachery and deception .
the story shifts from Miami to RIO de janiero,the lead duo bring a panache which only Hitchcock can infuse into stars with an endowing emotion that galvanizes a thriller to life .
Devlin [grant ]recruits Alicia[ingrid ] to entrap a neo -Nazi Brazilian group headed by Claude Rains developing uranium enrichment facilities ,as devlin despicably tutors her to seduce claude and to wed the nazi to perform an inside job ,this initial battle of sexes gives way to an ethereal love story as devlin realises he has been smitten by alicia.
The drama works at many dimensions,from the exchange of torrid glances between the haunted lovers to ultimately evoking envy when grant finally kisses ingrid in a sumptuous and delicately triumphant love scene which is a milestone in cinema .
This is a fever pitch drama immersed in lover’s dilemma but love is relegated to the back seat
,but it is the notoriously ravishing and illustriously talented Bergman who is the cause celebre in a complex,multi-layered role executed with immense style and talent galore as the vulnerable victim and the maligned wife suffering at the hands of both society and the neo-nazis trapped in a magical web of deceit weaved by the genius of Hitchcock.
An intelligent script with sharp dialogues and smooth characters restores your faith in love and feminine purity,this makes modern romances look like kitsch,and the tension evolves into a perilous yet piquant journey which is disturbing yet intensely profound and satisfying .
Hitchcock’s tormented lovers are emotionally fragile as they overcome their lacerated consciousness to suppress the moral inhibitions to triumph in the greatest love story ever made ,
their innocence and vulnerability demonstrated by Ingrid Bergman is equivocal to a sacred and ethereal enigma while the suspense evolves as a perilous foray into terror and Cary grant as Devlin has never given a better account of his supercilious charm enriched with a wondrous warmth .
it is interesting that FBI STARTED AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRODUCTION as it involves a uranium enrichment theme.
Rating: 5 / 5