Notorious 1946
I’m not sure when I first watched Notorious, but I thought it was great. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s early Hollywood films, it is more of an espionage and romance movie than his usual murders and terror. Cary Grant is his usual self, but with a real dark streak in his treatment of Ingrid Bergman. Watching again, the movie is a little slow, if you know what is going to happen. Then it really gets going only in the last thirty minutes or so as the tension increases and Bergman’s character is in real danger. Not as flashy or silly as later Hitchock movies, but still so cheap, with all of the location shots using rear projection to make the characters in the foreground look like they are in Rio. It probably works better here in black and white than it did in some of his later movies. The performances are all very good, mostly played very quietly as everyone is double-crossing everyone else. The movie is kind of this nice romance with a dagger through it. Maybe that is why I liked it so much.
The blu-ray I watched is from the Criterion Collection. They usually pick kind of obscure movies, so when they released one of a movie I knew I liked, I wanted to have it. I haven’t watched all of the features yet, just an old hour-long feature about the movie with some good interviews mostly of people who knew the people that made the movie. The scan of the movie looks great, so good maybe that you can better make out some of the rear projecttion shots and see the sometimes clumsy focus effects.
Written: 08 Jul 2020
Owned on: Blu-ray