A model of restraint compared to his more action-orientated thrillers, NOTORIOUS finds Alfred Hitchcock in the subdued, quasi-romantic mood he established with REBECCA a few years earlier. Ostensibly a straightforward spy thriller set in post-war Brazil, there is in fact nothing in the way of action sequences, and the expected MacGuffins are notable by their absence.

Instead the focus is on a brittle Ingrid Bergman, the disaffected daughter of a convicted Nazi official in the US, who is recruited by Cary Grant in to a CIA plot to infiltrate a secret network of high-ranking Nazis in Rio led by Claude Rains. Initially unwilling to help, she and Grant begin a tentative relationship which quickly sours when her purpose in the plot becomes clear: to charm and seduce Rains in order to siphon secrets out to the Americans – even to the point of marriage. From then on Grant is resentful, twisting the knife into Bergman at every opportunity as she gradually matures from cynical party girl to spy, lover and heroine.

…Grant is given little to do in the mid-section other than fire off petty insults at Bergman.

The post-war Brazilian setting offers up a refreshingly different atmosphere than the usual locales favoured by Hollywood at the time – all glitz and glamour on the surface, but with an underbelly shady enough to offer protection to fleeing supporters of Hitler. As usual, Hitch is less interested in the story than in building suspense, which he does here through the most trivial of events. The scene where Grant and Bergman snoop around Rains’ wine cellar as the bottles of champagne at the party upstairs gradually begin to run out becomes almost unbearably tense; likewise the finale when Grant smells a rat. That’s as close as it comes to explosive action. The romantic triangle is almost as gripping, despite the fact that Grant is given little to do in the mid-section other than fire off petty insults at Bergman.

This Hitchcock effort is one of his least showy – no eye-catching visual trickery here – and yet it rates as one of his most refined and polished works: evidence of a filmmaker at ease with dramatic material in any colour or flavour.

httpvh://youtu.be/2G8HY1UDe7Q