NOTORIOUS - A

Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, Notorious (1946) is to me one of the three best Alfred Hitchcock films ever.  [You will have to wait for the rest of my list to come out to figure out the others as I am not going to go into any of his other films in this review.] Producer-director Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller is to me much more satisfying than Casablanca (1942, starring Humphrey Bogard, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henried and Claude Rains and which won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay out of the total eight Academy Award nominations that it received).  Casablanca is often cited as one of the best pictures ever, if not outright mythological in its character portrayals and we-were-once-lovers ‘romances.’

Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay for Notorious.  (Again, I don’t want to give away anything more about the films that remain on my all-time top ten by alphabet by talking about any of Mr. Hecht’s other films but suffice it to say that for Notorious he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.)  This film, like many of Hitchcock’s others, has wonderful dialogue in addition to his signature mix of suspenseful action and male-female tensions (romantic and otherwise). There is no better script as far as I can remember for the sheer number of times that irony plays in the extraordinary scenes between Grant and Bergman. 

Frankly as much as I love Jean Simmons and Gregory Peck in The Big Country (1958 and you can read my review on this blog), I think there is no more exciting couple on screen than Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and therefore, I also recommend a personal favorite Indiscreet (1958) which stars these two as older lovers who are childishly keeping secrets from each other.  Other Ingrid Bergman films which I recommend are Gaslight (1940, starring Charles Boyer and has Ms. Bergman in her first Best Actress Oscar-winning performance); Anastasia (1956, which has Ms. Bergman in her second Best Actress Oscar-winning performance); Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958); Cactus Flower (1970, starring Walther Matthau and Goldie Hawn in her Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning performance); Murder on the Orient Express (1974, starring Albert Finney and in which Ms. Bergman won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar); Autumn Sonata (1978, Ingmar Bergman directed this feature starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann); and A Woman Called Golda (1982 made-for-television movie). As for Cary Grant I do believe I will save him for a special review all his own at a later date (i.e. after my top ten of all time alphabetically is finished).

Apparently one of the love scenes in Notorious is notorious because Hitchcock was able to get around the not-longer-than-three-seconds (kissing) code rule by having the lovers break their kiss long enough to press cheeks and then resume kissing again for another few seconds.  Yeah, that’s true romance!  In this film, Bergman plays Alicia, the daughter of a Nazi spy, who is by her own American sympathies and the presence of her crush Cary Grant, persuaded to become an American spy.  As you probably have figured out, I don’t much care for giving away a lot of the plot because I think good movies can speak for themselves. Just know that Notorious has all the suspense you have come to expect from Hitchcock and a great bad guy in Claude Rains who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the American government’s target Alexander Sebastian.  In addition to Casablanca, some of my favorite Rains appearances are in The Invisible Man (1933), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, starring Errol Flynn in which Rains plays Prince John), The Sea Hawk (1940, also starring Errol Flynn), The Wolfman (1941) and as Mr. Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).  He was in numerous other films which, as I always say, you can find on the awesome www.imdb.com website. Additional credits of note for Notorious are music by Roy Webb and cinematography by Ted Tetzlaff.

A Favorite Quote:  “Wouldn’t it be a little too much if we both grinned at her like idiots.” [Leopoldine Konstantin as Madame Sebastian]

Another Favorite Quote:  “There’s nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh. [Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman] (Hint:  She might be saying it ironically!)

Genre:  Espionage Thriller

Running Time:  101 Minutes