They don't make them like this anymore

I've been a Cary Grant fan going way way back. When I saw my first Cary Grant movie at around the age of thirteen or fourteen I immediately fell in love with him. He was everything that a man should be. Beautiful, charming, debonair, suave, intelligent, clever, and with a bit of the devil in him. My mother found my love for Cary Grant rather amusing since I was born in 1968 and Cary Grant was well before my time, but even at thirteen I knew what was great when I saw it, and Cary Grant was definitely a great one.

I don't remember the first time I saw Notorious, I know that it was sometime before 1985 when Remington Steele was the newest TV hit because when it was mentioned during the show once I had already seen it. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, it doesn't get much better then that.... except for maybe Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or perhaps Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, come to think of it there's Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn as well, not to mention the unforgettable Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. The list is endless I suppose.

Notorious, however, is without a doubt one of the most masterfully made movies I've ever seen. Young passionate Ingrid Bergman, along with an equally young and smoldering Cary Grant, played off by an older, brooding Claude Raines. All playing together in a plot that is deserving and more then lives up to the legend of the Alfred Hitchcock name. Hitchcock had a penchant for Cary Grant though (as well as for James Stewart and Grace Kelly), and Grant appeared in four of Hitchcocks movies, all huge successes.

In Notorious Grant plays a agent for the government out to find out what it is that Claude Raines is up to and stop him to help the allies win the war. His tool for achieving this goal is the beautiful and seductive Ingrid Bergman, who has an “in” with Raines’ group through her father, and has a particular hatred of police and the American government. Raines is the leader of an elite group of men, scientists, doctors, men of power and money that are working to help the enemy forces.

This trio sets up a simply compelling film fraught with suspense and danger that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat from the very start of the movie eagerly anticipating the next scene. Notorious, which was said to be very racy for its time due to its love scenes on the balcony between Grant and Bergman, is a titillating adventure that thrills you not only with the suspense but with the palpable passion that flows like a current between Grant and Bergman in their scenes together. As the plot becomes increasingly entangled, the pace and demeanor of the movie are taken up a notch to further add to the audiences’ sense of immanent danger.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, I don’t want to completely give away the plot, but be sure that it is a wonderful end to a truly great movie, paying homage to all the great movies of its time. The saying goes “they don’t make them like that anymore” and the fact of the matter is that they really don’t. At thirty-one years old I will always pick a Cary Grant, Jimmy Steward, Audrey Hepburn, or Gregory Peck movie over anything that they make today. Movies today can’t compare to the movies of the Golden Era of movie making. During that time in history great movies were created by great actors and great dialogue, not by special effects or how many things can be blown up in the course of the movie and still stay within ridiculously large budgets. Great films then were done on shoestring budgets, with extraordinary actors, incredible scriptwriters and audiences that still had the ability to listen to and absorb the most important part of films, the dialogue. With today’s movies catering to the lowest common denominator, Hollywood is underestimating the population and robbing us of what true movie making is all about.

If you haven’t seen Notorious, trust me, go out and rent it. You won’t be disappointed. If you have seen it and liked it there are so many more movies out there like it that will sweep you away if you let them. To name a few; Suspicion, Arsenic and Old Lace, Rear Window, Rebecca, North by Northwest, The Birds, Vertigo, To Catch a Thief, Talk of the Town and again, the list goes on and on. Cary Grant was also a wonderful comic actor and not to be missed in his funnier and lighter roles, which I highly recommend.

My rule of thumb is that if it has Cary Grant in it, it’s more than likely a good film….. unless it’s also starring Mae West.