A Notorious Reputation

In the past, when I've sampled classic films, I've had the best luck with Alfred Hitchcock. I haven't enjoyed all of his most famous films (I simply cannot see what most people seem to in The Birds), but have liked them often enough (Psycho, Rear Window, Rope) to keep checking back in. That recently brought me to his 1946 spy film, Notorious.

Alicia Huberman, daughter of a convicted spy, is recruited by a government agent to infiltrate a group of Nazis who have fled to Brazil after World War II. Alicia must juggle a budding romance with her handler, Devlin, as she seduces the Nazi leader, Alex Sebastian -- and all without blowing her cover.

It's easy to understand why Notorious is held up as a significant film. It's not just a template for the spy genre that would emerge more forcefully in the 1960s, it's a template for much of what Hitchcock himself would do later in his career. You can see the artist at work, discovering or developing some of his greatest techniques here: long and unedited camera shots that track an object of tension, cheeky ways of getting around censorship of the period, and more.

Yet I found the film to be much more an intellectual curiosity than a genuinely engaging movie. On paper, this should soar -- it's an entire story built around characters lying to one another, engaged in a massive battle of wits. But the first hour is ploddingly dull; only the last 40 minutes of the movie really fulfill the promise of tension inherent in this premise.

I often struggle with pacing issues and acting style when watching an older film, and this movie has both on full display. A languid 15 minutes opens the film, as Alicia is oh-so-gradually coerced into accepting a job as an undercover operative. Her ensuing efforts at embedding herself should be intriguing, but unfold too slowly and without suspense. It's only once the "machine" has been constructed that the movie finally starts to work -- and you have to watch and wait as every last gear and spring of that machine is put in place.

As for the acting? Well, this is a stacked cast of the most famous actors of the era. Ingrid Bergman is Alicia, Clark Gable is Devlin, Claude Rains is Sebastian, and classic Hollywood "that guys" fill out the roles all the way down. But each actor has embraced their own particular cliche of the era. Bergman is vamping in the fake "mid-Atlantic" accent of classic films. Gable is so aloof and disaffected as to be above emotion entirely. Everyone else is larger than life and unnatural. Of course, it's not entirely fair to expect modern acting from a movie made before, say, the 1970s... except that sometime you do get it (12 Angry Men), showing that even at the time, some filmmakers knew there was a more natural way.

I nearly shut this movie off halfway through out of boredom. I am glad I hung in there, as the last half really is the best part of the movie -- having made it that far, it would have been a shame to miss out. Yet better still would have been to never watch at all. I give Notorious a D. It's not my least favorite Hitchcock film (as I indicated earlier), but I've seen so many better ones that I'd never recommend it.