NFR Project: 'Notorious' (1946)

 

NFR Project: “Notorious”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Ben Hecht

Pho: Ted Tetzlaff

Ed: Theron Warth

Premiere: Sept. 6, 1946

101 min.

This is one of Hitchcock’s most mature and deeply felt films. Ostensibly about a spy ring, it’s really a scathing analysis of attraction, betrayal, regret, and sexual hypocrisy. It makes a male/female relationship into something transactional, a bargaining chip in the game of life.

It’s a romantic triangle. Cary Grant plays T.R. Devlin, a government agent who is trying to get the goods on a Nazi group centered in Rio de Janeiro. He recruits Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), a feckless young lady whose father happened to be a German spy. They happen to fall in love. Then Devlin must get her to seduce Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), an older friend of her family who is behind the spy ring.

This she does with reluctance, then in anger, feeling that Devlin has been stringing her along. She leaps into bed with Sebastian, making him one of her “playmates,” as she contemptuously refers to it. The plot thickens – Sebastian falls in love with her, asks her to marry him – and she accepts! She continues to gather intelligence for Devlin, which culminates in Devlin attending a party at the Sebastian home.

In an echo of the legend of Bluebeard, there is only one door in Sebastian’s house that is always kept locked – the key to the wine cellar. Alicia steals the key, passes it to Devlin. They explore the cellar. They find wine bottles filled with black sand (later found to be uranium ore). Surprised by Sebastian, they kiss to infuriate and distract him.

Now Sebastian guesses the truth. He goes to his domineering German mother (Leopoldine Konstantin in a frightening portrayal) and they decide to poison Alicia to death, slowly. She sickens; she is trapped.

Devlin comes to Sebastian’s and finds her. He confesses his love to her, and pulls her to her feet. He begins to walk her out of Sebastian’s mansion. The spies want to know what is happening, but Devlin makes Sebastian play along to get them out the door. The two lovers escape, leaving Sebastian to his fate in the hands of the conspirators.

It’s a film of close-ups. Hitchcock peers relentlessly into the faces of the three principals, who all carry off their roles elegantly. There are some signature bravura camera moves, and Hitchcock is as always a master at using objects in isolation as signifiers (the phallic key, the endless little cups of poisoned coffee).

Jealousy, despair, cynicism, and barely suppressed rage all are harvested here. The director once again gets to express his extreme ambivalence about human relationships. Devlin’s pimping out his true love: how much more Hitchcockian can you get?

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Story of Menstruation.