Set and made in the months
following the end of the Second World War, Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is an espionage thriller set
mainly in Brazil.
The film features a more romantic plot than many of the director’s previous
films and includes a couple of great performances from its leads Carey Grant
and Ingrid Bergman. Alicia Huberman (Bergman) is the daughter of a convicted
Nazi spy and is enlisted by her adopted United
States to counter spy on Nazi activities in South America. Her handler and government agent T. R.
Devlin (Grant) falls for his charge and jealousy ensues when Huberman goes to
romantic lengths to infiltrate the Nazi group.
At its best, Notorious matches the tension and drama of any Hitchcock movie but
there are large swathes which I found uninteresting. Unlike some of Hitchcock’s
best which are tense and exciting from start to finish, Notorious ebbs and flows from extreme brilliance to mere average
but overall is a very well made and intriguing film.
