By the time he made "Notorious" in the mid-1940s, considered by many to be his finest picture to date, Hitchcock had proved to be the ultimate filmmaker--a creative craftsman who took all the truths he learned from silent film, early talkies, and his teeth-cutting years as a popular director of British films in the 1930s and applied them to the Hollywood studio system with an ingenuity and flair that put him at the top of the game. It's all on display in "Notorious": the inventive camera work, the visually expressive narrative style that communicates more with images than words; the tight editing; and the exquisitely lit compositions that showcase Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman as quite possibly the most attractively filmed couple the silver screen had ever seen. And then there's that key to the wine cellar, which figures prominently as a symbol/motif throughout the movie--a prop worthy of one of the most celebrated crane zooms ever attempted to that point. CineVerse had a lot of fun parsing through this content hunting for meaning and merit, both in ample supply. Here is what we concluded:
WHAT ARE THE SEPARATE MOTIVATIONS OF DEVLIN AND ALICIA IN THEIR ROLE AS SPIES, AND HOW DOES THIS ADD DELICIOUS COMPLEXITY TO THE STORY AND CHARACTERS?
• Devlin is cold and mean to Alicia so that she’ll more easily gravitate toward Alexander and do a better job as a spy; yet he’s not just pretending to be cold and bitter—he wants his protégé to be promiscuous with the enemy, but he despises that part of her character
• Alicia accepts the job not only to improve her notorious reputation and association with her father’s Nazi sympathizing, not only because she accepts it as patriotic duty, but also because she loves Devlin; and yet she tries to hurt him later by commenting on how she’s Alexander’s playmate and will marry him
WHAT ARE SOME IMPORTANT THEMES, SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS AT WORK IN NOTORIOUS?
• Trust and betrayal: Devlin of Alicia, Alicia of Devlin, Alicia of Alexander, etc.
• The masking of identities and pretending to be something you’re not
• A key, which is a small symbol, but an important focus of our attention for a while
• Man’s inhumanity to his fellow man: Devlin and Alicia love each other, but wish to hurt each other; we hurt the ones we love the most
• The consumption of dangerous liquids—whether it be alcohol or poison—to either inflict harm or escape from reality
• A woman willing to be forced into transforming into a different identity to satisfy a manipulative male (revisited in Vertigo)
• Fairytale theme of a princess captured by a dark knight, locked in a tower and waiting to be rescued by her knight in shining armor
WHAT IS PIONEERING, ENVELOPE PUSHING, RISKY AND RISQUE ABOUT THIS PICTURE, ESPECIALLY FOR 1946?
• In the famous kissing scene between Devlin and Alicia that begins on her balcony and continues inside her apartment while Devlin makes a phone call, nearly three minutes of slightly interrupted smooching ensue. This was the longest extended kissing scene of its kind to that time; film censors tried to limit each on-screen kiss in a film to three seconds or less.
• Hitchcock creates a sympathetic Nazi villain: We actually feel more sorry for Alexander than for Devlin, you could argue
• Innovative and artistic camera work and lighting: consider the long crane shot from the top of the staircase to the key in Alicia’s hand; Alicia stepping into the light by the end of the recording Devlin plays; Devlin standing in the doorway in the canted point of view shot while Lisa wakes from a hangover; Devlin’s white hangover elixir glass contrasted with Alex’s black poison coffee later; Lisa’s poison-induced hallucination; and the uninterrupted extended take of Devlin at Lisa’s bedside at the conclusion.
• This picture's got one of the baddest matriarchs ever to grace the screen: Alexander's mother, played with icy aplomb by Leopoldine Konstantin, the quintessential mother-in-law from hell, along with Eric the strongest and most remorseless villain in the film
VARIOUS:
• This is arguably the greatest Hitchcock picture of the 1940s.
• It’s his first truly realized love story.
• “Notorious” is Hitch’s most richly expressive visual style on film yet to this point.
• This is a perfectly cast movie: we believe Bergman and Grant.
• There is not an ounce of fat on this film—a testament to the masterfully constructed tight screenplay co-written by one of the all-time greats—Ben Hecht.