Notorious (1946)

Very disappointing...

Sick Product of a Sick System

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

While the leads are excellent and there is sufficient suspense, this one of Hitchcock's lacks both a sense of humour which marks much of his best work and feeling.

A beautiful drama, albeit a couple of holes. I had been expecting Alicia's father to play a larger role in the film, given how much he had been discussed in the beginning. I had also expected a bigger deal to have been made over the role of the uranium ore. I was hoping to hear more about what the Nazis wanted with it, yet the film ended without explanation. I did like the ending however. The to Notorious is rather unconventional, leaving the fate of the leading lady Alicia rather wide open, and instead sealing the fate of Alex Sebastian in the last moment of the film. Alex Sebastian had what was coming to him, yet the end of the film made you feel for a bit, as the camera followed him up the stairs to certain death. It was suspenseful and excellently filmed, not his best, but close to it.

The talent is widely dispersed from director, to screenplay, to lead actors/actresses, to camera movement, and etc. Cary Grant, the lead actor in this film, was an extremely well-known and talented actor in the late 1930's, and into the following decade. The camera work in this film is a feature worth noting. The film immediately starts off with a close up of a newspaper, which aids as a foreshadowing mechanism in the events that will take place in the film. The black and white film has some close-up scenes of the two main characters making out, but not taking it too far due to the events that were occurring around this time period pertaining to vulgar or what was seen as "inappropriate" actions. Overall, this film was a successful Hitchcock movie and worth viewing.

At first I was not overly thrilled by this movie - the concept was interesting enough, and the actors were all great, but I found the pacing to be somewhat slow at first. However, when it got to the party scene, I instantly became much more interested - the suspense in the scene was so palpable you could cut it with a knife. After that, the movie just got better and better.The acting is great in this movie. Grant, Bergman, and Claude Rains all play their parts well, but German actress Leopoldine Konstantin especially stands out - she plays the mother of Alexander Sebastian, and although her role isn't the largest, every scene with her is wonderfully sinister. Her and Rains' performance in the ending is also great - you can almost taste their fear.