What neither Devlin nor Alicia anticipate is that they\u2019ll both have to suffer protracted, almost unbearable agony\u2014they quickly fall in love, only to find that her assignment is to seduce Nazi Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), who himself was once in love with Alicia, in order to infiltrate and gather intelligence on his inner circle\u2019s clandestine operation. Alicia waits for Devlin to tell her not to go through with it, but he remains silent, his mind poisoned by visions of her past. Love can\u2019t expunge his sordid preconception of her\u2014the many men in her life who came before him hang over his head like spectres. Why should she object all of a sudden to Sebastian becoming her latest conquest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What unfolds is perhaps Hitchcock\u2019s most pungent work, a film whose smooth, lugubrious style flows like wine but burns like vinegar. On a formal level, the Master was never more elegant, his camera balletic and ethereal, pirouetting around two lovers locked in an erotic embrace, and swooping down from above to isolate a cellar key clutched in an anxious hand. But there\u2019s a nastiness to Notorious<\/em>, coursing and seething just beneath its immaculate patina\u2014a sadistic streak that rivals even those of Marnie<\/em> and Frenzy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s there in the writing;Ben Hecht\u2019s screenplay is a thorny tangle of sensuality, stoicism, and subversions. The character of Devlin is a man capable of immense cruelty, a dispassionate manipulator who\u2019s all too willing to push the woman he loves to the brink of immolation, ensnaring her in a \u201clove test\u201d to which there\u2019s no right answer. If she does her duty and takes the job, she vindicates his suspicion of her licentious history, which he sees as an immutable, all-encompassing fact of her present, still her defining transgression:once a tramp, always a tramp. If she abandons her duty and turns down the job, she \u201cproves\u201d to him that she\u2019s a changed woman whose love is genuine\u2014but what would she be proving, really, to this man of such little faith? Merely that his perception of her is more important than her own sense of self-worth. Devlin embodies an especially pernicious brand of masculinity\u2014disturbed by his own passions, tearing down the woman who makes him feel vulnerable, showing an iota of empathy for her only when she\u2019s absent, rendering the sentiment meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hitchcock and cinematographer Ted Tetzlaff reflect Devlin\u2019s viciousness in their visuals, vitiating Grant\u2019s star power, enveloping that classical magnetism in impenetrable darkness. Grant, whose face and expressive physicality had by this point made him one of Hollywood\u2019s totemic leading men, is positioned here as if he were the villain, a predatory and sinister figure. His performance is formidable, his eyes like rapiers, his words like acid.Gone are the brio and big gesticulations of Only Angels Have Wings<\/em> and His Girl Friday<\/em>, supplanted by ominous inertia. Slight flickers threaten to breach Devlin\u2019s poise, to betray his pain, but they quickly give way to steady hostility. Hitchcock composes his shots so that Devlin always seems like the most dangerous man in the room, lurking towards the sides and corners of the frame as if priming an ambush, his face either obfuscated in shadow while everyone else is warmly lit, or turned away from the camera, the back of his head an emblem of his emotional reserve, the frigid sheen that renders him inaccessible. In one of Hitchcock\u2019s most memorable stylistic flourishes, the director shoots from Alicia\u2019s point of view as she wakes up from a drunken slumber, the camera spiralling as Devlin approaches the bed so that at one point he appears upside down\u2014the upended romantic lead made unnervingly literal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Try as Devlin might to diminish and flatten her, Alicia proves to be utterly irreducible. Sensual, sombre, and above all else slippery, she\u2019s perhaps Hitchcock\u2019s supreme heroine, grappling painfully with her desires and convictions while eluding convenient pigeonholes and avoiding detection behind enemy lines. She\u2019s a woman in constant, mercurial motion\u2014in an early scene, we see her stepping through a doorway, emerging from shadow into light, which might signify some sort of simplistic conversion from whore to Madonna if she didn\u2019t so easily shift back into ambiguity, as she does later when she slinks behind the gauzy veil of a curtain and indulges in a drink, after Devlin fails to admit that he wants her to decline the job offer. No two men ever see her in the same light; she presents an elastic image of herself as sleuth, seductress, and sacrifice, deftly morphing the shades and details of her identity, and one of the film\u2019s great pleasures is watching her become more and more consummate in her craft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of that surface guile does anything, though, to attenuate the turbulence within. Bergman is the film\u2019s beating heart, and in that ravishing face we see and feel all of the throbs and pangs that Alicia endures, the scars from Devlin\u2019s mutilations etched into her brow, waves of anguish cascading over her glittering eyes whenever she allows her veneer to crumble. At times, when her defences dissolve, she\u2019s almost kaleidoscopic\u2014watch how, as Devlin ruthlessly castigates her for infiltrating Alex\u2019s house and bedroom so effectively, Alicia\u2019s expression tumbles from desperate hope, to horror, to hatred, before finally sinking into total resignation, all in the space of a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At other times, it\u2019s the exertion of sustaining the artifice that\u2019s so moving. During her first dinner with Alex, Alicia executes an almost flawless opening salvo: her posture is inviting, leaning in as she speaks; her eyes and smile are luminous; her voice is warm and dulcet; her words of contrition for past misdemeanours are honeyed. Rains, who plays the sincere, deeply sympathetic Alex with such raw vulnerability that the Nazi\u2019s eventual doom feels startlingly tragic, makes the past feel tangible here, luxuriating in the sight of a previously unattainable wonder, years of yearning erupting through his gaze. \u201cIt\u2019s odd,\u201d Alicia murmurs, her eyes rising slowly, entrancingly from her drink to Alex\u2019s face, \u201cbut I feel at home with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that very instant, she secures her first significant triumph as a spy, entombing the love-struck Alex in a promise of flesh and devotion. But it\u2019s a triumph that feels more like a defeat, alcohol turning to ashes in her mouth. She can\u2019t quite sustain the act for the entire conversation\u2014there are still those fleeting moments in which a sense of horrible realization suddenly crashes down upon her features, moments that Hitchcock captures in lingering, trembling close-ups. Watch how the corners of her mouth drop ever so slightly when Alex kisses the back of her hand, as if she\u2019s suffocating the urge to recoil; how she fixates upon the bottom of her glass as he purrs his renewed affections for her; how her smile fades and her shoulders heave when Devlin\u2019s name is mentioned. Bergman\u2019s performance within a performance here might just be the finest, most complex work of her career, plumbing layers of subterfuge and interiority for intense poignancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For all of Hitchcock\u2019s spellbinding technical bravura, it\u2019s the precision with which he maps out the faces and gestures of Notorious<\/em> that continues to burrow into and gnaw away at the mind. The film\u2019s flourishes and intricate suspense sequences are famous for a reason, but the feelings that persist are generated by Hitchcock\u2019s acute sensitivity to the bodies of his characters, who are forced to conceal the injuries of psychological destruction and reconstruction behind a series of excruciating disguises. \u201cDry your eyes, baby,\u201d Devlin says to the tormented Alicia, \u201cit\u2019s out of character.\u201d Which character is he talking about, exactly? ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/notorious2-1024x576.jpg\")
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