NOTORIOUS
Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest triumphs. Everything here is perfect, including the casting, which for a change, actually works against type and thrives because of the switch. To a generation raised on intelligent sentiment, Ingrid Bergman was sacred. That she should appear as the daughter of a convicted and unapologetic Nazi war criminal felt anathema. That we meet her at a reckless celebration cum commiseration likewise jars the senses. As she is determined to get herself into as much trouble as her father, she looks for someone with whom to go on a drunken drive. There, with his back to the camera, silhouetted to us, clear as an azure sky to her, sits the unmistakable outline of Cary Grant's head.
Grant plays Devlin, an agent of some American intelligence operation. He employs Bergman (Alicia) to spy on her father's old friends, working up a re-emergence in Rio de Janeiro, appropriately enough. The two fall in love, a minor problem since Alicia finds herself engaged and married to Claude Raines' character Sebastian. Both Bergman and Raines were in Casablanca. This is not a strange twist of fate that reunites them. It was brilliance.
Sebastian is fascinating. He's no ideologue. He just wants to please his mommy, wallow in wealth, and sleep with Alicia, at least two of which goals I can merrily relate. His mother is instantly suspicious of this tepid vixen come to get her son in trouble with the members of the Party. And indeed they are a nasty bunch, each one ready to sell out the other and at the same time each competing to prove himself the crueler Nazi.
In short, we have worthy actors who only happen to be stars, we have a plot that exemplifies suspense, we have a tight and snappy script with volumes of memorable lines (my favorite is the last line of the film, delivered by Grant to Raines, one which won't make sense out of context but which I'll divulge anyway: "That's your headache."), and we have a theme that was ahead of its time then and which hangs just as urgently even to this day.
One of the director's five best movies.
Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant star in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest triumphs. Everything here is perfect, including the casting, which for a change, actually works against type and thrives because of the switch. To a generation raised on intelligent sentiment, Ingrid Bergman was sacred. That she should appear as the daughter of a convicted and unapologetic Nazi war criminal felt anathema. That we meet her at a reckless celebration cum commiseration likewise jars the senses. As she is determined to get herself into as much trouble as her father, she looks for someone with whom to go on a drunken drive. There, with his back to the camera, silhouetted to us, clear as an azure sky to her, sits the unmistakable outline of Cary Grant's head.
Grant plays Devlin, an agent of some American intelligence operation. He employs Bergman (Alicia) to spy on her father's old friends, working up a re-emergence in Rio de Janeiro, appropriately enough. The two fall in love, a minor problem since Alicia finds herself engaged and married to Claude Raines' character Sebastian. Both Bergman and Raines were in Casablanca. This is not a strange twist of fate that reunites them. It was brilliance.
Sebastian is fascinating. He's no ideologue. He just wants to please his mommy, wallow in wealth, and sleep with Alicia, at least two of which goals I can merrily relate. His mother is instantly suspicious of this tepid vixen come to get her son in trouble with the members of the Party. And indeed they are a nasty bunch, each one ready to sell out the other and at the same time each competing to prove himself the crueler Nazi.
In short, we have worthy actors who only happen to be stars, we have a plot that exemplifies suspense, we have a tight and snappy script with volumes of memorable lines (my favorite is the last line of the film, delivered by Grant to Raines, one which won't make sense out of context but which I'll divulge anyway: "That's your headache."), and we have a theme that was ahead of its time then and which hangs just as urgently even to this day.
One of the director's five best movies.
