Notorious (1946)

This brilliant Alfred Hitchcock film combines romance and suspense, mystery and action and presents startling performances from Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) plays the daughter of a man convicted of spying for the Nazis, a playgirl of dubious reputation who is known well in the international set. American agent Devlin (Cary Grant) is assigned to watch Alicia, but he quickly learns that she rejects her father's political leanings. He also falls in love with her, and the two end up in Rio de Janeiro.

Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) is a Nazi who runs a chemical plant in Rio, and the U.S. intelligence agency wants to learn all it can about the operation. Alicia agrees to help get the information, meeting Alexander and expressing some attraction for the man. They soon marry, a development Devlin is not too fond of but accepts as part of the spy business. During a party at Alexander's mansion, Devlin and Alicia secretly visit the wine cellar and find a mysterious ore in the bottles. Before the ore can be analyzed, Alexander begins to suspect that his wife is a spy and, with the help of his domineering mother Mme. Sebastian (Mme. Konstantin), he begins to systematically and slowly poison Alicia. Just before succumbing, Alicia calls Devlin, who drives to the mansion and rescues her, exposing Alexander as incompetent to his German masters and leaving the shifty little Nazi to his fate. Devlin and Alicia go on to have a happy life together.

Notorious is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most sophisticated thrillers. He employs a subtle touch in every frame, and his actors all underplay their roles. Early on Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht developed a "McGuffin" (the Hitchcockian term for the motivation or the item around which the plot of the film revolved) for the film. Hecht had read an article about uranium, a rare ore that Hecht believed had something to do with the development of the atomic bomb, a bomb only rumored to exist at the time. Hecht took Hitchcock to see scientist Dr. Robert Andrew Millikan at Cal Tech, where Millikan talked with them for several hours about the possibility of splitting the atom; but when Hecht brought up uranium, Millikan said it had nothing to do with the project. Feeling they weren't revealing any secrets, Hecht and Hitchcock went ahead, using the uranium angle, not realizing that uranium was a vital part of the makeup of the A-bomb. Unbeknownst to them, the minute they left Cal Tech, according to Hitchcock years later, a team of FBI agents was assigned to watch him and Hecht for months while the film was in production.

When Hitchcock went back to David O. Selznick to sell him on the film, the mogul thought the uranium McGuffin was a poor one the public would reject. Hitchcock was determined to make the film, and Selznick was equally determined not to make it under the Selznick International banner, so he appeased his top director and made enormous profits to boot by selling the Notorious package, Hitchcock, Hecht, Grant, Bergman, and the script, to RKO for $800,000 plus 50 percent of the profits in 1944. On top of that, RKO spent $2 million producing the film. Still, everyone was happy when the film met with tremendous critical and public approval, eventually grossing $9 million.

There is much in this film that proves Hitchcock a technical genius as well as a conceptual mastermind. Notorious contains a great crane shot, wherein Hitchcock positioned his camera at the top of a magnificent stairway overlooking a huge crowd of party guests in Alexander's sprawling mansion. The camera, in one sweeping take, moves down the stairs, over and through the crowd, into the main ballroom, and over to Alicia, to zero in on a tight closeup of the key to Alexander's mysterious wine cellar clutched in Alicia's hand. Just as elaborate but technically excellent is the plotting of this film, with each scene carefully worked out in detail in advance by Hitchcock.

The film also contains one of the longest and most passionate kissing scenes on record between Grant and Bergman (a little more than three minutes). He has arrived in her Rio apartment overlooking the magnificent bay, and she is about to serve him a chicken dinner. But they take their time getting to it, while Grant nibbles at Bergman's ears, and the two kiss and caress each other's lips, necks, and ears while they make mindless talk about the meal they are going to have. All of this was designed by Hitchcock to avert the then Hollywood censors from their restrictions on prolonged kissing scenes. The methodology even baffled the crafty Hecht when he showed up on the set to see this now famous kissing scene. "I don't get all this talk about chicken!" Hecht told Hitchcock, who only smiled in response.

The director later recalled a strange memory that had lingered for years in his mind and had prompted this scene in which the public had "the great privilege of embracing Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman together. It was kind of a temporary ménage à trois—I felt that they should remain in an embrace and that we should join them. So when they got to the phone, the camera followed them, never leaving the closeup all the way, right over to the door, all in one continuous shot. The idea came to me many, many years ago when I was on a train going from Boulogne to Paris. There's a big, old, red brick factory, and two little figures at the bottom of the wall, a boy and a girl. The boy was urinating against the wall but the girl had hold of his arm and she never let go. She'd look down at what he was doing, and then look around at the scenery, and down again to see how far he'd got on. And that was what gave me the idea. She couldn't let go. Romance must not be interrupted, even by urinating." The stars later told Hitchcock that "they felt very awkward in that scene. But I told them not to worry, it would look great on film, and that's all that mattered. It's one of my most famous scenes."

Bergman's personal life at the time of production was very much in turmoil. She had only been in America for a few years and was still unsure of the English language. Nonetheless, she was never better. Grant, who had made Suspicion (1941) earlier with Hitchcock, was never a problem. He moved effortlessly through his role exuding sophistication and confidence, but lacking his usual charm since his part called for a cynical agent whose emotions reluctantly take over a no-nonsense mentality. But one scene did find Grant asking Hitchcock a ridiculous question. He carped to the director that he had to open a door with his right hand while he was holding his hat with the same hand. Said Hitchcock, "Have you considered the possibility of transferring the hat to the other hand?"

Nothing could really perturb Hitchcock. Even when a fire broke out on the set, the director was unflappable. He was in a conference with his brilliant cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff, discussing the wonderful shadings and contrasting lighting effects the cameraman established for Notorious, when he was informed that the scenery was on fire. Hitchcock finished his sentence to Tetzlaff, then turned to some stagehands and cooly remarked: "Will someone please put that fire out?" and went back to his conversation.

Cast:

Performer, Character

Cary Grant, Devlin

Ingrid Bergman, Alicia Huberman

Claude Rains, Alexander Sebastian

Louis Calhern, Paul Prescott

Leopoldine Konstantin, Mme. Sebastian

Reinhold Schunzel, Dr. Anderson

Production Credits:

Producer, Alfred Hitchcock

Director, Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriter, Ben Hecht

Editor Theron Warth

Cinematographer, Ted Tetzlaff

Music Director, C. Bakaleinikoff

Composer, Roy Webb