Notorious: beautiful, simple and natural

Notorious is certainly Hitchcock's most elegant movie. It is beautiful because of the perfect Ted Tetzlaff cinematography, bellissimo by the unforgettable presence of Ingrid Bergman and, at the same time, simple by the Ben Hecht screenplay, and almost natural by the comfortable performance of Cary Grant.

Although it has a background of international espionage, that is a Nazi plot in Rio de Janeiro, the script revolves around a love triangle formed by Alicia, a girl of doubtful reputation who, despite this, or perhaps because of it, is loved by two men. One is destroyed because it is forced to convince her to surrender to the other to unravel the mystery. The other equally destroys himself because he blindly trusts her, if he neglects the safety rules he should follow.

What is most striking about Notorious is that, despite the perilousness of German spies, and the killings and attempted assassinations, one does not see a weapon, not even a single drop of blood.

In addition, in the development of the plot, there are plenty of Hitchcock's tricks, the MacGuffins, elements of the script that the audience cares about, but that do not concern anything at all. An example of this is Agent Devlin's discovery of a radioactive substance hidden in a series of bottles from Sebastian's cellar. The existence of the substance in possession of Alicia’s husband, when it was not even known what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were made of (the film is from 1946), is absolutely irrelevant.

Other memorable scenes occur. Like the foreground closeup, from the point of view of an Alicia with a hangover, through a glass of Alka Seltzer. When Devlin tries to save his beloved, who is being poisoned by the Nazi mother-in-law, he climbs a staircase in a few seconds. As they descend, the number of steps seems to be multiplied by ten.

In the end, when we expect a gunfight or some epic chase, a gentleman appears at the door of the mansion and invites Sebastian:

"Alex, could you come in, please? I wish to talk to you” - and he goes.

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