Notorious

Rating 5+/5

As someone who has been an avid fan of Alfred Hitchcock's work for many years, I'm commonly asked which one is my favorite. Honestly, that's an almost impossible question to answer, but if I had to choose one, it would be Notorious.

Ingrid Bergman stars as Alicia Huberman, who's father has just been convicted for treason against the United States. To drown her sorrows away, she decides to host a party. At that party she meets a man named Devlin (Cary Grant), whom she learns is a government agent. Devlin has been assigned the task of getting Alicia to join a government mission of infiltrating a group of Nazis working out of Brazil. Though hesitant at first, Alicia agrees to join Devlin and they head out for Rio de Janeiro.

After arriving in Brazil, Devlin and Alicia are waiting to here of their assignment, and they quickly realize they are falling in love with one another. When they learn that Alicia's assignment is to make an old Nazi friend of her father's fall in love with her, their romantic relationship must cease and a professional one must take its' place. Once she has secured her position, Alicia and Devlin's work of espionage truly begins.

One of the reasons that I feel Notorious is one of the best Hitchcock films, is that it uses subtlety to create suspense. A wine bottle, a tea cup, and a key; not the typical objects you would associate with fright, but that's what makes Notorious so brilliant. By focusing on such mundane and everyday objects, the plot seems all the more realistic. It is the way that those ordinary items are presented into the plot that prove why Hitchcock is still considered to be one of the greatest directors of all time.

Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant both give performances that are so honest, there are times when you forget that the actors were not each other's real life love interests. In many scenes, the characters are unable to talk to each other in fear of being overheard, so they must communicate with only the glance of an eye or the subtle use of body language, and it is in those scenes that the tremendous talent of the actors can be observed. Neither Ingrid Bergman nor Cary Grant were nominated for an Academy Award for Notorious, and I think that is one of the greater Oscar snubs that there has ever been.

I truly love most Hitchcock films, but Notorious has always stood out for me. There is an indescribable quality that it has that will always pull me into the story, no matter how many times I've seen it. Maybe its' the acting; maybe its' the directing. Or maybe its' just the wonderful combination of all the things that can combine together to create movie magic.