It’s Hitchcock Week at the Paramount Theater and last night was a chance to see one of the best from the master of suspense, “Notorious”, the 1946 spy thriller starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Raines. Set mostly in Rio after the war, “Notorious” is about an attempt to penetrate a Nazi spy ring, operating in South America. Grant plays Devlin, an equivocating intelligence agent, who recruits the daughter of a German Spy, convicted of treason in Florida. For the romance element of the story to work, we have to believe that he is in the dark over exactly what his superiors want from Alicia Huberman. 

The world of espionage is particularly dark in Hitchcock’s films. Although we want the American agencies that he vaguely refers to to succeed, they do so through one of the most unpleasant means available. In both “Notorious” and “North by Northwest”, party girls with emotional vulnerabilities are asked to seduce the targets in order to gain intelligence. With Eva Marie-Saint we don’t get a lot of backstory, but Ingrid Bergman’s character is all backstory, especially for the first act of the film. Alicia has rebelled against her Nazi father and in drowning herself in booze, she has become a loose woman, who is taken advantage of by a variety of men. At the depth of her humiliation, Devlin, the character played by Grant, insinuates himself in her circle of friends and begins the process of luring her into an assignment in South America. I find it interesting, that Grant is the man who falls for the loose women turned spies in both films. In “North by Northwest” he is an innocent, caught up in plans beyond his ken. Here, he is a calculating cad, who learns the dangers of his own callousness. 

“Notorious” is at heart a love triangle, the third party being the erudite Alexander Sebastian,  a key member of the Nazi group. It seems that years earlier, when Sebastian was friends with Alicia’s father, he had a massive crush on her, and the U.S. and Brazilin intelligence group wants to take advantage of that by inserting her into his life. In essence, pimping her out for Uncle Sam.  The fact that Devlin has fallen for Alicia and she for him, is a big complication. Devlin is cold to Alicia, as a way of distancing himself and her from the unpleasantness of her activities. Regardless of what Devlin says to her however, he is defensive on her behalf with the intelligence group in private. In an excellent illustration of true movie dialogue here is an example:

Paul Prescott: [about Alicia] I don’t like this, I don’t like her coming here.

Walter Beardsley: She’s had me worried for some time. A woman of that sort.

Devlin: What sort is that, Mr. Beardsley?

Walter Beardsley: Oh, I don’t think any of us have any illusions about her character. Have we, Devlin?

Devlin: Not at all, not in the slightest. Miss Huberman is first, last, and always not a lady. She may be risking her life, but when it comes to being a lady, she doesn’t hold a candle to your wife, sitting in Washington, playing bridge with three other ladies of great honor and virtue.

Devlin gives himself away to his superior Paul Prescott, played by veteran actor Louis Calhern, with a dash of charm and a bureaucratic mind. Prescott has a clever scene revealing a little of his humanity when Devlin comes to him worried about Alicia, and the discussion takes place while he is prone in bed, eating cheese and crackers. Not the tightly controlled mission boss, but a man who has to kick his shoes off an dine alone in bed sometimes. He knows what he is doing with Alicia, but he is not the monster that he could be. A decade later, Leo G. Carroll will fill a similar role in the other spy film I mentioned.

My admiration for Claude Rains as an actor has been expressed before. In “Casablanca”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, and “The Invisible Man”, Rains has been one of the consistent lights of the golden age of Hollywood. He is the sweetest and most vulnerable Nazi in films, as a besotted member of this cabal, he is both murderously awful and sympathetic. That is a piece of cognitive complexity that only an expert performer like Rains could pull off. The defeated resignation of his denouncement is perfect for the character and the film.

There are several moments of tension in the movie. Bergman’s acquisition of a key without her husband discovering it is one of those sequences. Of course the search for the secret in the wine cellar is gripping as well. You could hear the audience last night, collectively inhaling and holding their breath, as a wine bottle teeters on the edge of a shelf. Finally, the elegant bluff and turning of the tide with Grant rescuing Bergman from the clutches of Rains, and his loathsome Mother. The mother, played by actress Leopoldine Konstantin, is one of the Mother’s that Hitchcock used as a tool for manipulating his male leads in the movies. While not as famous as Norman Bates mother, Mme. Sebastian, would certainly belong in a rogue’s gallery of villains. 

As usual with a Hitchcock film, the production design is impressive. Although the scenes set in Rio rely on rear projection, they still look convincing. Alicia’s house in Florida, and her apartment in Rio, swim in the deco elegance of the era and her outfits do the same thing. The camera work is impeccable, I liked the trick with the coffee cup in the foreground as Alicia is in the background, both in focus. There are a number of moments shot from above that also establish the pecking order of power in the household, but allowing us to track the activities of the characters as well. The final descent on the staircase is an excellent visual complement to the plot tension in the script. 

From 1945 to his death in 1980, Alfred Hitchcock made 24 films and in that thirty five year period, a dozen of them are essential and another half dozen are excellent. “Notorious” deservedly belongs on the top shelf with a cast of stars that were at the height of their powers. A big screen visit is always called for when a Hitchcock film is involved. Tonight, two more of the top tier films.