Notorious: Hitchcock, Grant and Bergman create a true classic

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is a classic suspense film, one that essentially serves as a primer for scores of directors and writers to copy in subsequent decades. With classic performances from Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, and the masterful direction of Hitchcock, Notorious lives up to its reputation as a standard-bearer for suspense film.

The film opens with a trial – the father of Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) has been convicted of treason against the United States during World War II, which has just ended a year prior. We first meet Alicia in her bungalow, entertaining guests and proceeding to get quite drunk on whiskey. She notices a strange man at her party, and is immediately attracted to him, flirtatiously chastising him as a party crasher. The man is T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), who – after a drunken driving scene that probably wouldn’t have been made in today’s more educated world – identifies himself as a government agent. While it’s clear that he is also attracted to Alicia – and who can blame him – he is there to offer her a job.

Her father’s treason involved a group of Germans who are working out of Rio de Janeiro, and the government would like Alicia to earn her way back into their good graces by associating with them, and finding out what she can. (The implication, of course, is guilt by association. Even though they have a recording of Alicia proclaiming her love for the United States, they want her to prove it through espionage. Nice.)

When Alicia arrives in Rio – and frankly, if one is going to be put into immediate service to spy for the country, there are worse places to be sent to -- she learns that she is specifically supposed to associate with Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains). She knows Sebastian, as he previously expressed more than a passing romantic interest in Alicia, which she dismissed. The implications are somewhat seedy, and the government officials (with the exception of Devlin) make somewhat cheap remarks about Alicia’s character, insinuating that someone like her won’t mind jumping into bed with a relative stranger. Given the time and political sentiment of the time, it’s a nice subtle jaded look at opinion and politics.

Balancing through Alicia’s difficult job is the fact that she and Devlin have, of course, fallen in love. Professionalism and Devlin’s stubborn refusal to be vulnerable enough to admit he loves Alicia are one of the nice layers to the film that set this far apart from typical suspense fodder. Both Grant and Bergman turn in some of their best work, and look great doing so. (It’s worth a note to the American Cancer Society, by the way, not to let young children see this film. There are about ten people in the free world who actually make cigarette smoking look good, and Cary Grant is one of them, along with James Dean and Humphrey Bogart.)

The plot of the film is not particularly complicated, and the suspense is created from rather mundane situations, like a rush to get out of a room before others discover them, etc. It’s truly a display of how the simplest things can create masterpiece. Tension is built on situation and the strength of the actors, not cheesy score and cats jumping through open windows. It’s really quite remarkable – so many directors seem to always want to mimic Hitchcock, yet they do so by overplaying their hands. It’s an indictment of the garbage produced these days that I kept waiting for Cary Grant to pull off his mask and turn out to be Claude Rains in disguise, or for new surprises to turn up at every corner. Notorious isn’t built that way – yes, there are secrets worth discovering in the film, but the suspense structure is built on basically one plot line, which is enough. The overriding love story, of course, is the true backbone of the film. It’s a bit implausible, their love, but it’s not atypical of such love stories in this film era. There isn’t much discussion between the two to suggest that they actually ever truly get to know each other – for instance, it’s never actually clear whether Alicia knows what the T.R. stands for in Devlin’s initials. These are, of course, mere quibbles, as no one in their right mind wants to see anything else but Grant and Bergman together at the end of the film.

The film is naturally shot beautifully, with trademark Hitchcock lighting and angles. Two scenes in particular really put his stamp on the film. In the beginning of the film, when Alicia is working off her hangover from the night of drunken driving, she is lying in bed when Devlin approaches her from the other room. The camera follows Devlin through the room from the perspective of Alicia – and because she is lying on her back, as Devlin moves around her, he eventually appears virtually upside down, where he continues to talk to her. It’s a bit jarring, but clever enough that one can’t help but smirk at the style. The second scene is later on, when Alicia is getting close to fainting, for reasons better left unsaid. For anyone who has ever actually fainted, or had pulsating headaches, the scene hits almost too close to home. The way people’s voices are muted, with a pulsing beat overriding everything, and the way the camera blurs in and out…it’s all just brilliantly done. Throughout the whole film, the film looks beautiful – despite being in classic black and white, it comes across vivid and lively. Keep Ted Turner and his colorizer away from this baby.

Certain films are considered classics but don’t hold up – others seem to improve with age, like fine wine. (For those that have seen this film, excuse the analogy.) Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is clearly one of the prime examples of a film that not only holds up through the years, but improves as others unsuccessfully try to copy it. It should be a prerequisite for film school directors, as well as a must-see for any fan of film.