#38: NOTORIOUS (1946)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

5.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never (although I have seen Mission: Impossible 2, which is apparently somewhat of a remake of Notorious)

BEST SEQUENCE

The moment when Alicia realizes how much danger she's in

BEST LINE

"Alex, will you come in, please? I wish to talk to you"

- Last line of the movie

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

96%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Sublime direction from Hitchcock, and terrific central performances from Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant make this a bona-fide classic worthy of a re-visit."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The daughter of a convicted German spy is asked by American agents to gather information on a ring of German scientists in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?"

DIRECTOR

Alfred Hitchcock

MAIN CAST

Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains, Leopoldine Konstantin

THOUGHTS

• The filmmaking is great and the actors are excellent and yet, for whatever reason, this didn't fully grab me. I think this is likely another example of a movie whose groundbreaking qualities are less obviously groundbreaking when watching it today
• Hitchcock includes some very impressive shots, but they're impressive in kind of an unshowy way, to the point that I didn't immediately realize how impressive they were. This shot is a good example of that:
  
• I also didn't even realize that Ingrid Bergman's character, Alicia, was meant to have a distinctly "notorious" reputation as a woman who drinks and socializes with men. Watching her in this movie, I just saw her...drinking and socializing with men. It didn't really occur to me how differently she may have been viewed back in 1946
• I quite liked Claude Rains as the villain, especially the way that some might see him as pitiable despite being a Nazi. Claude Rains is tied with Harrison Ford for the most movies on this list at four apiece, but we haven't seen Rains since the very beginning: movie #100, The Adventures of Robin Hood (in which he was also very good)
• And that's about all I have to say about Notorious! Considered one of Hitchcock's best, but it's a movie that I gained a greater appreciation for while reading about it after watching it

Up next: We won't have to wait long to see Claude Rains again! Or Ingrid Bergman, for that matter. It's a movie that I think of as more romantic than thrilling, but we'll see how Casablanca stacks up