Reviews Aug 09 2008 @ 08:00 am
REVIEW: Notorious
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Written By: John Taintor Foote (story) and Ben Hecht and Alfred Hitchcock (uncredited) and Clifford Odets (uncredited)
Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Leopoldine Konstantin
Running Time: 101 minutes
Not Rated
Nick Plowman oversees Fataculture, a South African blog on all things film. In addition to his much appreciated global perspective (quite frankly, there are way too many Americans in this here blogosphere thingy), he’s only 17. Seriously, were you watching Notorious and writing about it when you were 17? I didn’t think so.
Notorious is by far, in my humble opinion, one of the finest, perpetual intercessions between a destructive love story and a disciplined espionage thriller in cinematic history, and is also noteworthy as Alfred Hitchcock’s most visually non-conformist picture. Melodramatic only because of misinterpretation, Hitchcock’s usage of self-contained pretext, or MacGuffin, notorious in itself, adds layers of espionage intrigue that makes writer Ben Hecht’s serious commentary on the complexities of human psychology all the more resonant. Notorious, based on John Taintor Foote’s two-part short story “The Song of the Dragon” appearing in the 1921 Saturday Evening Post, exists on the fray of what I would consider noir, and although most Hitchcock films exist in a category defined by their being ahead of their time, no matter what you classify this character-driven examination of common humanity as, it is an undeniably rich picture.
A curious romantic opening sharply sets up a vein through which that classic Hitchcock humour freely flows. For this romantic encounter occurs between two individuals who live their lives by means of never-ending deceit and betrayal, politically and romantically, but in order to succumb to their untimely attraction a certain level of trust has to be initiated. Liberation of self is a thematic device that is clichéd and overused, and is therefore somewhat easy to disregard in modern films. If one considers the fact that clichés are simply over-utilized truths, Hitchcock’s use of them in Notorious could be forgiven for no other reason than the fact that the film was made before his chosen elements even had the time to become clichés. However, true to form, Hitchcock smartly masks cliché with effective innuendo, which eliminates any need for forgiveness.
“Miami, Florida, 3:20 p.m., April 20, 1946” is when and where the story begins, and that specific subtitle placed over a shot of the metropolis of Miami is the only downright specific in a film made appealing because of its effortless ambiguity. Starring two Hollywood greats at the peak of their careers, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, Notorious is an obvious convergence of talent where two men are pitted against one another because of their questionable attachment of a stunning yet vague woman who is not exactly what they need her to be, but they waste no time in trying to get her to conform to their ideals.
Ingrid Bergman plays that very woman to great effect. Alicia Huberman is her name and she is the dipsomaniacal and promiscuous daughter of a Nazi spy who is tried and convicted for treason. Because she is subversive by proximity, secret agent Devlin (Cary Grant) sees her as a befitting recruitment to infiltrate the household of spy boss Sebastian (Claude Rains) who lives with his monstrous mother (clearly related to Adolf Hitler in some capacity) played by Leopoldine Konstantin. Sebastian loved Alicia a long time ago, but his love was not reciprocated by her. Nevertheless, by pretending to have feelings for him, she can stealthily unearth secrets about his operations. She does this, despite the moral implications; her reason being is that she has fallen in love with her recruiter who is in actual fact forcing her into another man’s bed. Speaking of beds, Notorious was made in the heyday of the Hays Code censorship period, so any occurrences of “improper conduct” are continuously kept out of frame, but are deeply rooted in a predominant sexual charge adding even more complexities to the film’s characters. Even the infamous “longest kiss” in film history, which is not even a single kiss, sidestepped the production code stating that a kiss could not be longer than three seconds. By mixing the kissing with dialogue and time-wasting discussions and arbitrary actions, the kiss is rather a component of a longer, more wholesome display of romantic affection. By today’s standards, that kind of consistent eroticism is tame, but the unbroken embrace is genuinely affecting.
Essentially, Notorious is a wholly actionless thriller, so why is it so compulsively engrossing? Even after my fifth viewing of the film, I have yet to fully comprehend its enigmatic magnetism.
A distinct sense of dramatic irony saturates the story from start to finish. Although Sebastian is a criminal, he is very much a romantic at heart – and his consuming infatuation is what gets him into trouble in the first place. We feel sympathy for him, and he’s the Nazi villain. You would think a world-class spy would have a little more common sense, but alas, the sheer power of Devlin’s “heroic” plight gets the better of the entrusting Sebastian. Devlin, insecure and atypical, requests Alicia to make herself available to any/all of Sebastian’s desires, but thinks less of her when she complies with him as a sort of twisted romantic gesture. It has been said that producer David O. Selznick had Vivian Leigh in mind for the role of Alicia, but I doubt Bergman’s ability to blend her character’s moral ambiguity with impracticality could have been matched by any other actress at that time. It’s a shame the Academy had a problem with rewarding Hitchcock’s many deserving actors and actresses with the recognition they so obviously deserved.
His characters are formed out of the stereotypes of high society (the stunning socialite, the attractive gentleman and the caring yet blinded bore) but Hitchcock turns them inside out and defies the limits of those very stereotypes. No one is what they seem to be at first glance, for the audience and for the characters as well. Innovative characterization at its finest is difficult to forget.
Shot-for-shot, the attention to detail present in every frame of the black and white cinematography is astounding. Almost every shot leaves room for different examinations to arise depending on the viewer’s particular perspective, and many film students have dissected the visual magnificence frame by frame. Simply, Hitchcock makes every shot count and the subjective point-of-view shots enhance the audiences’ connection with the film and its intriguing participants.
The entire film feels like an exercise in prolonged suspense with no coherent resolution other than what is casually suggested towards the satisfying end of the film’s final act. Besides being a polished example of one of the great screen romances, Notorious also set the standard for blending the stylish and suave noir elements of tact and tension with unwavering romantic readiness in cinema throughout history, be it of the noir genre or otherwise. It may not be Hitchcock’s most famous film, but it is no doubt one of his most fully aware, full-bodied expressions of a true cinematic puzzle that comes together so well without coming close to anything resembling finality.
THE END.
on Aug 09 2008 @ 8:37 am 1. Sam Juliano said …
Definitely, a top-flight entry in this terrific Movie Zeel consideration of a marvelously quintessential American art form. If I may add, NOTORIOUS has one of the greatest openings of any film in movie history, with that crane shot descending in the key in hand. In fact it’s an iconic Hitchcockian moment.
I agree with your vital assessment of the film’s meticulous attention to detail, much in the tradition of Hitchcock in general. Those secondary characters too, (again a Hitch trademark) are deliciously fascinating. It a 5 for me, but I can live with the 4 and a half. It’s one of Hitchcock’s most celebrated films in every sense of the word.
Real nice work here, Nick.
on Aug 09 2008 @ 10:44 am 2. Cinexcellence said …
Excellent review, sir. I watched Notorious last Summer and fell in love with it. That ending is just priceless. And easily one of my favorite “THE END” titlecards.
on Aug 09 2008 @ 11:11 am 3. Nick Plowman said …
Thanks very much guys, it is a total honour to take part this noir appreciation exercise and I could have only hoped to produce a retrospective worthy of this site (on one of my favourite Hitchcock’s no ).
on Aug 09 2008 @ 1:36 pm 4. Phillip Johnston said …
Fantastic review, Nick. Its been a while since I’ve watched this (at least 5 years), but I remember loving it even before I became a “cinephile”.
on Aug 09 2008 @ 10:04 pm 5. Miranda Wilding said …
I HATE THIS FILM WITH THE PASSION OF A THOUSAND WHITE HOT SUNS.
I’ll never forgive the ex who suggested that we sit at home and watch this on my birthday instead of going out. He said it was great. The pizza was awesome. The film was horrendous.
Thanks, buddy. No wonder I broke up with him.
But as much as I loathe NOTORIOUS, I ADORE this review.
Thanks so much for e-mailing me and letting me know where you were, my sweet baboo.
Welcome back to the land of the living. Superlative critique as per usual.
Baby, you’re a star….
on Aug 10 2008 @ 9:27 am 6. Evan Derrick said …
Strong words, Miranda. I can understand the experiential aspects of disliking the film, but what about it exactly is so infuriating?
on Aug 10 2008 @ 10:45 am 7. G said …
I, personally, found the love story distasteful. It felt forced, artificial, and misogynist.
on Aug 10 2008 @ 11:10 am 8. Sam Juliano said …
Virtually all film historians, not to mention Hitchcock fans consider this one of the greatest films of the 1940’s. I don’t know a single person in my lifetime who has not worshipped it. It is a masterpiece with a capital “M.”
on Aug 10 2008 @ 11:38 am 9. Sam Juliano said …
Hitchcock’s irrefutable five-star masterpieces (in my view and in the view of many others)
Vertigo
Psycho
Notorious
The Lady Vanishes
The 39 Steps
Rebecca
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
North by Northwest
Spellbound
I Confess
The final choice above is a personal selection that won’t get full support from everybody else, but it contains an extraordinary performance by Montgomery Clift, and the film is riveting an datmospheric, presenting a compelling moral dilemma. Some would put THE BIRDS, the original THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, BLACKMAIL and afew others in the upper etchelon, but I would have them at 4/5. And then there are others too who have a fervant fanbase in this prolific’s director’s full output.
on Aug 10 2008 @ 12:27 pm 10. Nick Plowman said …
I absolutely adore “Notorious,” but I can understand (or simply accept) why some people are not completely into it. It’s sort of edgy and experimental, even if it feels cool, calm and collected.
I personally didn’t find the love story misogynistic at all, I felt as though the men were painted in an immature, almost pathetic fashion whereas Ingrid Bergman’s Alicia was a woman who followed her heart and stayed true to her word throughout the film. In other words, she was made out to be a sort of heroine while Devlin and Sebastian were totally messed up and confused individuals who wouldn’t know right from wrong, in terms of romance and love, even if it smacked them in their faces. But that is just my take.
on Aug 10 2008 @ 9:17 pm 11. Miranda Wilding said …
Evan, I sincerely did not mean to offend. I didn’t, did I?
I’m the new chick here. I really enjoy it when you visit over at my site.
I made it over for Noir Month and I may not be at MZ much after that. Sporadically in the future I imagine. But it is a thoroughly awesome site.
You and Luke have much to be proud of.
Well, my disparaging of NOTORIOUS is *ahem* relatively mild. You should see me OFF the net when I get worked up. The world is not enough, as they say…
Mr. Plowman wrote an excellent review. The kid’s got moxie. He’s an absolute genius.
Of course Monsieur Juliano is a greatly eruditious gentleman with a vast and incomparable knowledge of film.
But NOTORIOUS, to me, is a very cold proposition.
It barely gets two stars from me - and it’s bloody lucky to get that.
I could go on for pages. But I’ll keep it short and to the point.
I think it’s bargain basement Hitchcock. I haven’t seen all of Hitchcock. But I’ve viewed A LOT. This is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But at the same time the film is infernally pretentious and gratingly self important. Has a real melodramatic tone that doesn’t work.
Most importantly to me, this is a motion picture that’s sexist in a particularly insidious offensive way.
You can blame the era. But there any number of pictures that came down the pike pre 1960 where women were autonomous individuals that had their own power and knew what the hell they were doing.
Actually, that’s one of the reasons I love noir (classic and modern) so much. The whole femme fatale thing may have some hardline feminists up in arms due to the whole deal about men being lured by women (and then taken for a ride) due to their beauty and/or dangerous sexuality.
But not this particular feminist…
THAT’S LIFE. That’s what we as women do. Hell, if that didn’t happen, there would be no marriages or relationships. Thank God women ARE intriguing creatures.
Of course in noir it always takes a decidedly negative turn for these poor saps one way or the other. But I’m talking about drawing men in in a positive sense now. Obvously.
I just happen to like or enjoy movies where women can be themselves and not end up disparaged for their sensuality.
NOTORIOUS REALLY misses the mark there.
on Aug 11 2008 @ 7:28 am 12. Evan Derrick said …
Of course you didn’t offend, Miranda. You’re going to have to work a lot harder than that to get my goat.
No, I was just curious about the details behind your strong reaction, and now you’ve given them to me, and as I suspected, they were well worth inquiring after. Great points, all, and gives me a new perspective on the film. And really, it can’t be overstated how valuable your viewpoint is, and how much it adds to the conversation.
on Aug 11 2008 @ 7:48 am 13. Miranda Wilding said …
Thanks loads, Evan.
You’re unfailingly polite and very kind. That goes a long way with someone like me.
It is always an absolute pleasure to be over here at MZ.
on Aug 11 2008 @ 8:16 am 14. G said …
As my mention of misogyny earlier probably implied, I’m with Miranda.
on Aug 11 2008 @ 9:32 am 15. Miranda Wilding said …
Thank you for that, G.
Yeah. Why a woman (as a character in a film or as an actual living breathing person) would want a man who implied that she was a whore - repeatedly - escapes me.
Of course, the function of that particular word has changed over the decades. In the 40s, morality was such that if a woman had a sexual relationship outside of marriage (with practically anyone) she could be considered a whore by many. However, no one bsck then - from what I understand - seemed terribly concerned about mens’ social behaviour regarding females.
And of course there is a type of man that attaches that term to every woman that refuses to show him a good time. Irony is everywhere, is it not?
Oddly enough, I don’t have any real problems with women being judged. It’s not like all females are sweetness and light. (Believe me.)
But I do have a great deal of difficulty with any society where men and women are held to entirely different standards. If a woman is a bad person or she’s doing something that’s terrible, that’s fine. But if a man does EXACTLY the same thing, then that should be socially unacceptable as well. For EXACTLY the same reasons.
It reminds me of that ridiculous argument that CANDICE BERGEN and JACQUELINE BISSET had at the end of the movie RICH & FAMOUS. Candy played this uptight Southern belle and Jacqueline was this hard drinking, fast living English writer.
By the time the end arrives it’s late 70s/early 80s and the women are around 40. If I’m not mistaken (it’s been a while since I saw it), the big wicked fight was precipitated by the fact that Candy’s husband had always been in love with Jacqueline’s character. He was finally divorcing her.
So Candy’s furious (even though her spouse ISN’T leaving her for Jacqueline) and she starts this holy war. She starts talking about old yellow dogs that hang out in the yard looking for anything they can jump on. “They’d hump a snake.” Then she says, “Just how many men have you had?”
Jacqueline refuses to answer.
“Well, I know why you won’t tell me. There were TOO MANY, weren’t there? I’m willing to bet that you’re a slut.”
Jacquline’s gorgeous translucent blue eyes turn to ice. “How many men before you’re a slut?”
Candy stares her down with a level gaze. “Three.”
“Then kick me out of the yard.”
AMEN, baby….
on Aug 11 2008 @ 9:54 am 16. G said …
Sticking with Miranda, I actually thought that Nick’s defense of the film sounded alot like my critique would. Nick wrote “I felt as though the men were painted in an immature, almost pathetic fashion whereas Ingrid Bergman’s Alicia was a woman who followed her heart and stayed true to her word throughout the film.”
There’s at least some truth to this, but (in what we can refer to as the Knocked Up conundrum) it seems like the mature woman is punished for her maturity, while the immature men are rewarded for their immaturity. Alicia takes all the physical risks and has to be the adult in the relationship, and Hitchcock et al seem to think that’s fine, or maybe even a worthy manner of penance. That’s no good for me.
on Aug 11 2008 @ 10:43 am 17. Miranda Wilding said …
G, your insights are extraordinarily sharp.
I’ve only seen NOTORIOUS once. But, as I recall, there didn’t appear to be a lot of subtlety to this particular picture. All the characters are painted with fairly broad strokes.
Alicia does suffer a lot. The guys are let off the hook completely. Well, until the end, when you can tell that the gravy train stopped for CLAUDE RAINS right…there.
As a fallen Catholic, penance is not anything that I would wish on my worst enemy. But you used the applicable word here and you’re absolutely right.
But I don’t think Hitch liked women anyway. All that stuff that I heard about him attempting to destroy TIPPI HEDREN’S career because she rejected his advances seem likely when you look at a lot of his films. He made some brilliant pictures but I don’t think his attitudes towards the opposite sex were very healthy.
All you have to do is view the movies. The subtext is crystal clear.
on Aug 15 2008 @ 12:30 pm 18. K. Bowen said …
Nick, how could you deny this film the complete fifth star? This is a genius film, and arguably the first of the voyeuristic line that runs through Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho.
on Aug 15 2008 @ 12:41 pm 19. Sam Juliano said …
K. Bowen is 100% right, although Mr. Plowman can be forgiven with the 4 and a half, which is close enough. NOTORIOUS is one of the greatest of all American films in any category, and I have yet to meet anyone face to face or in context, that didn’t consider it an absolute masterpiece, whether I encountered them in graduate and undergraduate film classes, on line on movie blogs and chat rooms, at festivals, in film journals, among the critic’s review sites and simply with plain old film buffs.
Again I commend Nick on his outstanding work here.
And Mr. Bowen’s “voyeuristic line” argument is also commendable.
on Aug 15 2008 @ 2:51 pm 20. Nick Plowman said …
It all depends on the day and my mood K, and when I wrote this little retrospective, it just didn’t feel like a 5-star film to me (not that I am an expert). I know it is great and all that, and many people think it to be the bees-5 star deserving-knees, my appreciation of it only goes so far. Each to his/her own I guess. Some people love this film, some hate it, I happen to love it – just not enough to think of it as a full-on masterpiece.
on Aug 15 2008 @ 8:32 pm 21. films noir said …
Hey Nick. Great writing. I wish I could express myself half-as-well-as you. And at 17! I am one envious aging baby-boomer.
It is too many years since I last saw Notorious to make any worthwhile comment on the film itself, but anything with Ingrid Bergman has to be good.
Strangely
I am with Miranda on Hitchcock: I find his movies cold and calculating, and misogynistic - he was a guy with serious hang-ups…
Btw, I am an Aussie.
on Aug 23 2008 @ 4:18 pm 22. Nick Plowman said …
Well thank you very much
on Sep 10 2008 @ 2:24 pm 23. jeffmcm said …
There are a bunch of scholars out there who’ve re-read Hitchcock’s movies and re-interpreted them as heavily pro-feminist, just in a weird, unexpected manner, specifically The Birds, Marnie, Vertigo, and this movie.
The idea is, Hitchcock was terrified of women, yet also in awe of them and keenly aware of their position within society.
on Sep 10 2008 @ 2:54 pm 24. Evan Derrick said …
It would be interesting to read some of those ideas, Jeff. Then again, it might be much more interesting in theory than in practice.