Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’ blends romance, espionage, and suspense

With today’s Reel Classic, we present anoth­er clas­sic Alfred Hitchcock film star­ring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Both Bergman and Grant appeared in mul­ti­ple Hitchcock films. Today’s fea­ture is Notorious, released in 1946. Also star­ring was Claude Rains who had appeared with Bergman in the clas­sic film Casablanca.  

The sto­ry is set in the year 1946 dur­ing the post-war era. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is the daugh­ter of a con­vict­ed German spy. Government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) has been assigned the task to recruit her to infil­trate a group of for­mer Nazis who escaped Germany and now reside in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The U.S. Government offi­cials sus­pect that mem­bers of this group are plot­ting against America and its allies. One of the lead­ers of this group, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), was a friend of Alicia’s father and once loved Alicia. Though she first resists the plan to be a spy, she even­tu­al­ly agrees with the encour­age­ment of Devlin. 

While plans are being devel­oped, Alicia and Devlin spend time togeth­er and fall in love. Devlin is informed by his supe­ri­ors that the plan is for Alicia to seduce Sebastian to gain his trust and infor­ma­tion. Devlin tries to per­suade them that ask­ing her to do so is ask­ing too much, but they per­sist. With this task in hand, Devlin takes a cool­er approach with Alicia, and she sees this change in behav­ior as evi­dence that he was manip­u­lat­ing her feel­ings to get her to agree to the task. 

In Brazil, Devlin arranges for Alicia and Sebastian to meet at a rid­ing club. Sebastian rec­og­nizes her and still has feel­ings for her. He invites her to a din­ner par­ty at his home which he tells her will also be attend­ed by some busi­ness acquain­tances. She agrees and is instruct­ed by Devlin to mem­o­rize the names and nation­al­i­ties of all those in attendance. 

At the din­ner par­ty, one of the guests becomes quite upset at the sight of a par­tic­u­lar wine bot­tle. He is quick­ly tak­en from the room and lat­er, when he tries to leave, he is told he will be dri­ven home by one of Sebastian’s asso­ciates. Alicia’s impres­sion is that he will not return home but instead will be killed. 

Alicia con­tin­ues in her role and even­tu­al­ly Sebastian pro­pos­es to her. When she informs Devlin of the pro­pos­al, she is dis­ap­point­ed in his appar­ent indif­fer­ence and she accepts the proposal. 

Upon return­ing from her hon­ey­moon, she is pre­sent­ed with a set of keys to the house. However, she notes that a key to the wine cel­lar is not includ­ed. Devlin con­vinces her to throw a par­ty and invite him as a guest, and he will inves­ti­gate the wine cel­lar. She does so and on the evening of the par­ty man­ages to get the key for the wine cel­lar from Sebastian’s key ring and gives it to Devlin. 

What Devlin and Alicia dis­cov­er in the wine cel­lar is more than just wine, and Sebastian dis­cov­ers that the key is miss­ing from his key ring. He dis­cov­ers Alicia and Devlin togeth­er and becomes sus­pi­cious of his new wife. What is the secret in the cel­lar? What will come from Sebastian’s sus­pi­cions? And what will come of Alicia and Devlin’s relationship? 

Notorious was an adap­ta­tion of a short sto­ry pub­lished as a two-part ser­i­al in the Saturday Evening Post in 1921. The sto­ry, “The Song of the Dragon” was writ­ten by John Taintor Foote and was ini­tial­ly brought to the screen as a silent film, Convoy, in 1927. It was set in New York dur­ing World War I. 

The screen­play for Notorious was writ­ten by Ben Hecht, who had also worked on the screen­play of Hitchcock’s Spellbound (also star­ring Ingrid Bergman). 

The role of Sebastian’s moth­er was played by Leopoldine Konstantin who had been one of pre-war Germany’s great actress­es. It was her only appear­ance in an American film and her efforts were well applaud­ed and described as “one of the unfor­get­table por­traits in Hitchcock’s films.” Others con­sid­ered for that role includ­ed Ethel Barrymore and Mildred Natwick. 

Alfred Hitchcock was adamant that he want­ed Cary Grant for the role of Devlin. The head of the stu­dio, David O. Selznick, had Joseph Cotten under con­tract and worked to get Hitchcock to have him in the role. However, Hitchcock stuck with Grant and even­tu­al­ly Selznick gave in. Selznick also want­ed Vivien Leigh to play the role of Alicia but the role went to Bergman. 

Notorious was the offi­cial selec­tion of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. It pre­miered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in August 1946 with Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant all in attendance. 

The film was a box office suc­cess and was one of the high­est gross­ing films of the year. The crit­ics’ response was also very pos­i­tive. Bosley Crowther, crit­ic for The New York Times, wrote “Mr. Hecht has writ­ten, and Mr. Hitchcock has direct­ed in bril­liant style, a roman­tic melo­dra­ma which is just about as thrilling as they come — vel­vet smooth in dra­mat­ic action, sharp and sure in its char­ac­ters, and heav­i­ly charged with the inten­si­ty of warm emo­tion­al appeal.” Critic Pauline Kael wrote “The sus­pense is ter­rif­ic . . . Great trash, great fun.” 

Later crit­ics also praised the film. Roger Ebert includ­ed it on his list of “Ten Greatest Films of All Time” and described it as “the most ele­gant expres­sion of the master’s visu­al style.” He also wrote that Notorious had “some of the most effec­tive cam­era shots in his — or anyone’s — work.” Ebert iden­ti­fied it as his favorite Hitchcock film. 

In 1999 Entertainment Weekly list­ed Notorious at num­ber 66 on their list of “The Greatest Films of All Time” and in the same year The Village Voice list­ed it as num­ber 77 in their “Best Films of the Century.” In 2000 it was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the United States Film Registry by the Library of Congress. 

Notorious was adapt­ed twice for radio, in 1948 for “Lux Radio Theater” and again in 1949 for “The Screen Guild Theater.” Both adap­ta­tions had Ingrid Bergman repris­ing her role as Alicia Huberman. In 1992 it was remade for a tele­vi­sion movie with the sto­ry line revised from Nazi con­spir­a­tors to Communist con­spir­a­tors. The remake has a rat­ing of only 4.4 on IMDB. 

An inter­est­ing sto­ry revolves around the key to the wine cel­lar. Cary Grant kept the key used in the film and, years lat­er, pre­sent­ed it to Ingrid Bergman telling her that it had giv­en him good luck. He told her he hoped it would do the same for her. In March 1979 the American Film Institute hon­ored Alfred Hitchcock with a Life Achievement Award. At the din­ner in his hon­or Ingrid Bergman pre­sent­ed Hitchcock with the key giv­en to her by Cary Grant. She told him that she was hope­ful it would pro­vide good luck for him as well. Reportedly he was quite sur­prised and very delight­ed to receive the gift. 

In a con­ver­sa­tion with famous French film direc­tor Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock described Notorious as a sto­ry of clas­sic conflicts: 

“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 these ele­ments of psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma have been woven into the spy story.” 

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a Critics Score of 96% and an Audience Score of 91%. The site’s Critics Consensus states “Sublime direc­tion from Alfred Hitchcock, and ter­rif­ic cen­tral per­for­mances from Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant make this a bona-fide clas­sic wor­thy of a re-vis­it.” The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) rates it at 7.9 of 10. 

In search­ing my Roku device I found Notorious avail­able on two free stream­ing sites — Fawesome and Plex. There is also a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

If you are a reg­u­lar fol­low­er of Reel Classics, you may have noticed that I have reviewed a num­ber of Alfred Hitchcock films, includ­ing such clas­sics as Rear Window, Rebecca, and Vertigo (to name a few). Hitchcock was a pro­lif­ic film­mak­er, begin­ning his career in the days of silent films and last­ing until the 1970s. 

And let us not for­get his efforts with his two tele­vi­sion shows Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour which ran in the 1950s and 60s (and still do today on var­i­ous stream­ing sites). He is one of my favorites, so I can safe­ly promise that you will see more of his work here. He was indeed a mas­ter of his craft. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.