NOTORIOUS (1946)
80TH ANNIVERSARY PRESENTATION
Fans and critics may be divided over which is Alfred Hitchcock’s best film, but this post-World War II thriller is easily among his sexiest as it celebrates its 80th anniversary. You start with a love affair between government agent Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of a Nazi war criminal. He recruits her to seduce escaped Nazi Claude Rains, now living in Brazil. Critics have called this Hitchcock’s first fully mature work because of its tangled sexual politics. Grant loves Bergman but must push her to marry Rains. Bergman feels betrayed by Grant. And Rains marries her despite objections from his controlling mother (Madame Konstantin). Yet it also has all the earmarks of a Hitchcock film: technical bravura (one of the screen’s longest crane shots), romantic obsession, a morally suspect leading lady, a sympathetic and cultured villain, a MacGuffin, and the inevitable Hitchcock cameo.
d. Alfred Hitchcock, 102m, DCP
DCP courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.