Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant , Claude Rains | US Thriller
reviewed by Richard Chatten
By the he made ‘Notorious’ Hitchcock had comfortably settled into the Hollywood scene and produced probably the most conventional film of his career, buoyed up by the sheer star power of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman (both making their second appearance for The Master, the latter as a tippling hussy first seen nursing a hangover).
Later Hitchcock gives full reign to a narrative that pictures this vulnerable and helpless female character trapped mercilessly between a spiteful lovestruck Grant and an older, richer man in the shape of Rains whom she feels nothing for but is obliged to marry due to male peer pressure. Bergman rises to the occasion with a nuanced and thoughtful turn.
Claude Rains as usual gives the best performance as one of Hitchcock’s most sympathetic villains, as his terrifying mother Leopoldine Konstantin is absolutely awesome as one Hitchcock’s smothering matriarchs, while Grant’s final act against Rains is obviously an act of sheer malice rather than the simple act of a professional far exceeding the animus he later summoned against Eve Marie Saint in ‘North by Northwest.
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