I would firstly like to say that I am absolutely obsessed with director Alfred Hitchcock. His movies are monumental and in my opinion, should be seen by everyone. I decided to watch one of his older films called Notorious, featuring two of my favorite actors/actresses; Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. It was phenomenal and despite being slightly cheesy, as someone who detests anything to do with heavily implied romance, this movie was very realistic in that regard. The movie received a 97% from critics and a 91% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The film had a $1 million budget and made $24.5 million in the box offices.
Most people would not consider Notorious to fall under the film noir category. I do not disagree but I would like to point out that there is still much emphasis on the lighting since it is still in black and white. I would also argue that instead of a cynical male protagonist we have a cynical female. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is our main character who happens to be an alcoholic and does what the normal male protagonist would do in a typical film noir film. It could be said that Devlin (Cary Grant) is Alicia’s ‘love interest’ (this being a romantic film) who helps her not destroy herself. In the movie, she must go undercover and win the affections of Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) who is a Nazi hiding out in Brazil, he could be our ‘femme fatale’ in this case. Additionally, I would like to note how components of this movie were influenced by the Hays Code. There is no heavy kissing which is mentioned and forbidden by the Hays Code, and all the couples in the film sleep in separate beds whether they are married or not.
One of my favorite components of this film was the cinematography. Towards the beginning, we have a scene with Alicia at a party drinking excessively. When she is waking up the next morning the camera does a close-up and zooms out into a cup of water with a fizzing aspirin tablet on her bedside to emphasize the excess of her drinking. We then see Devlin walking into the room from her point of view and the camera portrays him upside down and backlit. Another moment is later in the film at Alexander Sebastian’s party the camera does a tracking shot from the upstairs balcony showing the guests downstairs, it tracks all the way to a close up of Alicia’s clenched hand holding and nervously twisting the keys to the wine cellar.
The aspect that absolutely shocked me the most about this movie was how similar some of the shots were to the ones in The Godfather. (Spoiler) At the end of the film, Alicia is being carried into a car by Devlin with Alexander Sebastian trailing behind begging them to let him come. One of his fellow Nazi officers tells him to come back inside and as he slowly walks up the stairs, the camera goes into deep focus to make the stair distance appear longer. Alexander Sebastian goes inside and the door closes on a silhouette of a bunch of men.
I would give this movie 5/5 stars for the wonderful story, brilliant cinematography, and the phenomenal acting. The movie ended really well with a twist and there wasn’t a single moment in the movie that was boring or slow. I recommend this movie to anyone who is looking for a ‘feel good’ type of flick with a little thrill.
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