Notorious
1946
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains
Made in between his early, admired British films (The 39 Steps, The Lodger) and his creative peak in Hollywood in the fifties and early sixties (Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest), Notorious is unlike other Hitchcock films. Yes, the suspense element makes it classic Hitchcock, but the relationship at the core of the film is such a damaged, dirty, unhealthy one, it is Hitchcock’s most clearly realized interpretation of film noir as well.
Alicia Huberman's (Bergman) father is jailed for treason for working with the Nazis after the end of WWII. She is pressed into servitude for the US government by an agent named Devlin (Grant) to atone for her father's actions. The agency takes her to Rio to spy on some old friends of her father's. One of her pop's old friends, Alex Sebastian, (Rains) takes quite an interest in her, which causes no end of grief for Devlin, who has also fallen in love with Alicia.
