- "This is a very strange love affair," notes Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), and she's right. To describe her relationship with T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) as tumultuous is putting it mildly. At one moment they're entangled in one of the most romantic kisses in cinematic history, and in the next they're hurling insults at one another. The nastiest comments ("right below the belt, every time") come from Devlin, who constantly berates Huberman for her notoriously libertine lifestyle. In fact, that's one of the reasons that she was selected by Agent Prescott (Louis Calhern) to work with Devlin as a government spy. Well, that and the fact that her father was convicted of being a Nazi agent. Like she said, a very strange love affair.
- Huberman's mission requires that she become intimate with Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), a suspected Nazi conspirator living in Rio de Janeiro. Sebastian was once in love with Huberman, and the old flames have been rekindled. So this should be an easy assignment, right? Well, there's still the small matter of Huberman's relationship with Devlin. If Devlin really loves her, she thinks, he should have protested such a demeaning assignment. If Huberman has really reformed, he thinks, she should have refused such a demeaning assignment. Of course, each of them misinterprets the other's silence, and Huberman agrees to take the job. Who would have thought that a spy story would contain such a realistic depiction of the way relationships sometimes work?
- The operation starts off successfully enough, but Sebastian, to everyone's surprise, asks Huberman to marry him. She agrees, although we again we get the impression that a single word of protest from either her or Devlin would have been enough to shut down the mission. Instead, Huberman becomes the newest member of the Sebastian household, where she is subjected to the scrutiny of the forbidding Madame Sebastian (Leopoldine Konstantin). Huberman suspects that the wine cellar holds the essential secret of the Nazi conspiracy, and so invites Devlin to a dinner party as an opportunity for infiltration. After some exciting subterfuge involving a smuggled key, the two of them strike gold or, to be more precise, an element substantially heavier and more radioactive than gold. Unfortunately, Sebastian subsequently discovers that his new bride is an American agent and turns to his mother for help. The always conciliatory Madame Sebastian ("We are protected by the enormity of your stupidity") is only too happy to brew up the perfect solution to their problems, and it is up to Devlin to rescue Huberman before the poison finishes her off.
- I usually think of Notorious as first and foremost an espionage story, but my recent rewatching reminded me that it is primarily a love story. In fact, one could even consider the entirety of the spy plot to be a MacGuffin for the real stories between Devlin and Huberman or Huberman and Sebastian. Every interaction between Grant and Bergman in particular has such strong emotional undercurrents that even lines like "you're doing good work" come across as indictments. Theirs is an uncomfortably believable version of a relationship that suffers from poor communication and misaligned expectations, the entirety of which is embedded in a spy story.
- And what a spy story it is, by the way. Ben Hecht's writing and Hitchcock's direction are both exemplary, as is all of the film's acting. In fact, Notorious contains so many wonderful scenes that it's tough to select the best one. Instead, I'll mention three. First, there's the famous extended kiss scene, made all the more plausible because it is interspersed with a discussion of chicken for dinner and phone messages. Second, there's the terrific party scene that contains both the famous zoom shot that lands on a key and several visual reminders of the dangers of needing more wine. My favorite scene, however, may be the one in which the Sebastians are taking their afternoon coffee. Nobody has said anything about poison, but the attentive audience knows exactly what's going on. It's Hitchcock's famous visual narrative style at work in one of his best films.
- I spotted Hitchcock getting champagne at the party.
