Notorious, Alfred Hitchcock, 1946, US
Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin, Reinhold Schunzel, Moroni Olsen.
102 min. b/w.
One of Hitchcock's finest films of the '40s, using its espionage plot about Nazis hiding out in South America as a mere MacGuffin, in order to focus
on a perverse, cruel love affair between US agent Grant as Devlin
and alcoholic Bergman as Alicia, whom he blackmails into providing sexual favours for the German Rains as a means of getting information.
Suspense there is, but what really distinguishes the film is the way its smooth, polished surface illuminates a sickening tangle of self-sacrifice, exploitation, suspicion, and emotional dependence.
Grant as Devlin, in fact, is the least sympathetic character in the dark, ever-shifting relationships on view, while Rains, oppressed by a cigar-chewing, possessive mother and deceived by all around him, is treated with great generosity. Less war thriller than black romance, it in fact looks forward to the misanthropic portrait of manipulation in Vertigo.
There are several memorable scenes of the film such as the long kiss of the couple that with Hitchcock's ingenuity avoided the "code" was in force at the time..
#DramaMovies #dramafilm #romancecomedy #thrillermovie #blackandwhite #romancefilm #dramafilms #movies
Σχόλια
Δημοσίευση σχολίου