Notorious (1946) was written by Ben Hecht and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It stars Cary Grant as Devlin, an FBI agent, and Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman. Huberman's father has been convicted of treason against the U.S., because of his postwar Nazi activities. Bergman is drinking her life away among friends who are drinking their lives away.
Grant recruits her to join him in South America and seduce the Nazi leader there--Alexander Sebastian, played by Claude Rains. How can a movie miss when it stars Bergman, Grant, and Rains?
The plot is Hitchcockian, and not very subtle, but who can resist star power like that? Some of the scenes make us groan 70 years later. Bergman is a "loose woman," so it's OK for her to marry Rains in order to help the FBI. Everyone smokes. Evil people look evil, and good people look good. Actually, that's an asset. Leopoldine Konstantin as Rain's mother, Mme. Sebastian, looks very evil and she acts even more evil than that. She only has a supporting role, but it's what she does with that role that counts.
We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum, in Rochester NY. It was great to see it on the large screen, but it will work almost as well on a small screen. IMDb raters have placed this movie in the top 250 movies of all time. That's not a mistake--it deserves to be there.
Grant recruits her to join him in South America and seduce the Nazi leader there--Alexander Sebastian, played by Claude Rains. How can a movie miss when it stars Bergman, Grant, and Rains?
The plot is Hitchcockian, and not very subtle, but who can resist star power like that? Some of the scenes make us groan 70 years later. Bergman is a "loose woman," so it's OK for her to marry Rains in order to help the FBI. Everyone smokes. Evil people look evil, and good people look good. Actually, that's an asset. Leopoldine Konstantin as Rain's mother, Mme. Sebastian, looks very evil and she acts even more evil than that. She only has a supporting role, but it's what she does with that role that counts.
We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum, in Rochester NY. It was great to see it on the large screen, but it will work almost as well on a small screen. IMDb raters have placed this movie in the top 250 movies of all time. That's not a mistake--it deserves to be there.