Notorious (1946)

Film: Notorious

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: UK

Released: August 1946

Runtime: 101 minutes

Genre: Thriller

Studio: RKO

Influenced: Terence Young, Lindsay Anderson, Brian de Palma, Truffaut, David Fincher

Choosing where to start with Hitchcock for this blog has caused me a fair few headaches, as a case could be made for the inclusion of The Lodger (1927), an early silent film that revealed Hitchcock's formative training in Germany under the influence of expressionist filmmaking, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Rebecca (1940) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), but for me Notorious is Hitch's first true classic. Notorious is also the first movie where he was director and producer, liberated from the stifling influence of Hollywood producer David O Selznick, who sold the film rights to RKO.

Full creative control imbues Notorious with the perfect Hitchcockian blend of suspense, sexual drama and occasional darkly comic light relief. Hitch himself described the film's plot as follows, "the story of Notorious is the old conflict between love and duty. Cary Grant's job – and it's rather an ironic situation – is to push Ingrid Bergman into Claude Rains' bed. One can hardly blame him for seeming bitter throughout the story, whereas Claude Rains is a rather appealing figure, both because his confidence is being betrayed and because his love for Ingrid Bergman is probably deeper than Cary Grant's. All of these elements of psychological drama have been woven into the spy story."

Notorious was also by far Hitch's most visually stylish film to date, from the rearview mirror shot in the early driving scene to the stunning establishing shot of Rio de Janeiro on arrival by plane and the tracking shot from the top of the stairway at the party, slowly panning down the stairs to focus in on the key held in Bergman’s hand. Other innovative shots include the fizzing aspiring zoom out and the hallucination scene before Bergman faints. With its international setting and theme of espionage and evil masterminds, Notorious was clearly an influence on the James Bond franchise. 

Hitchcock apparently became infatuated with Bergman during filming, and both he and the sometimes surly Grant were unusually accommodating towards her. Bergman's character Alicia is another femme fatale partly inspired by Mata Hari, in this case sold into sexual slavery for the purposes of espionage, while Claude Rains is superb as the undercover Nazi Sebastian, giving the villain a nuance and sympathetic air. The script (written by Ben Hecht) also has one of Hitch's best MacGuffins, in this case uranium ore hidden in wine bottles, a prophetic choice of plot device that led to the director being followed by the FBI for 3 months. Truffaut said the film "gets a maximum of effect from a minimum of elements ... To the eye, the ensemble is as perfect as an animated cartoon."