Criterion offers up a new 4K remastering of Notorious, one that shows off an impressive amount of detail and depth. The grain present is natural, not overly processed, with a superb contrast showing a nice range of greys and whites, with deep blacks. Claude Chabrol, and Stephen Frears; and others: A very good documentary that does much to.
1
No filmmaker gets under my skin more consistently than Fritz Lang, and while M lacks some of the paranoid extravagance of his silent fantasies, it is flawless. Peter Lorre ingeniously incarnates the evolution from lizard to man, and the director’s every shot and sound underscores the excitement of cinema in the process of discovering its own power. One of the disc’s extras finds Claude Chabrol unsuccessfully attempting to mimic a Lang camera move. The new Criterion print, with a corrected aspect ratio and restored fade-out line, burnishes the film’s deathless vitality.
2
Okay, I’m cheating: no one is murdered, and the confidence men and cardsharps are lovable. Still. This is Preston Sturges’s peak—a comedy that has not dated one whit, for which everyone involved, not least the actors (Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, supported by a quartet of inspired scene stealers: Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, Eric Blore, William Demarest), seems to have been thoroughly stimulated. Demarest’s closing line is perfect.
3
Why did Constance Towers have such an abbreviated career in the movies? She’s wonderful in Sam Fuller’s perverse examination of perversity, launching the film by beating up her pimp (you might say she wigs out) and closing it by identifying a child molester through the revelation of his naked kiss. It’s a drunken tabloid party, almost absurdly brazen.
4
One of the greatest urban crime films ever made. The first hour takes place in an industrialist’s living room, with huge picture windows that look over the city without seeing it, yet Kurosawa’s camera work is so deft and inventive you never feel the constriction—only pummeling suspense and a moral quandary. Toshiro Mifune plays coat-and-tie decency as well as he does his wild men, and Kurosawa descends into the lower depths with blinding clarity.
5
Jules Dassin’s tour of the London underworld glistens with inky blacks, swirls of smoke, pockets of isolated light, a mise-en-scène broken into Mondrianesque squares, and stunning performances by Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, a Greek wrestler named Zbyszko, and, in the defining performance of a career that ought to get one of those sorry-we-overlooked-you lifetime-achievement Oscars, Richard Widmark, who indulges a brief moment of elation by hurtling a stair railing to affect an incongruous pose of Chaplinesque delight.
6
Olivier’s best film as a director and maybe as an actor. With the help of excellent source material, he gives us a masterly criminal who narrates his villainy before executing it, trusting that his will, brains, oily charm, and relentless commitment will serve him, until it no longer does. Like Rupert Pupkin, he’d rather be king for a day than a shmuck for a lifetime. Every time I watch it, I think: “This time Anne will resist him.” She never does.
7
Criterion’s comprehensive edition of this long-undervalued film is a major DVD event, though it may not enlarge the film’s fan base. The problems, beyond a few incomprehensible plot points, include a dreadful lead performance by Nixon look-alike Robert Arden, who is surrounded by terrific actors in the margins (Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, Katina Paxinou), plus gorgeous Paola Mori; the result feels a bit like Hamlet without Hamlet. Then there is Welles’s wig and beard, evidently borrowed from a junior high school performance of Faust. Never mind: there are many, many unforgettable moments, and the plot is so good—detective as inadvertent Judas goat—that a fine, conventional film could still be made from the same material. Criterion includes the surprisingly good novel, which Welles variously took and denied credit for. In my hearing, he took credit.
8
The love story is so powerful, the spectacle so grand, that Marcel Carné’s masterpiece (an indispensable Criterion production) isn’t often regarded as a genre piece, though it is inhabited by every kind of criminal and involves an unforgettable murder in a Turkish bath—made particularly ghastly for occurring just off camera. Yet Marcel Herrand’s Lacenaire is one of the cinema’s most fascinating monsters, and his machinations resolve the fate of everyone else, including the muse incarnated by the great Arletty.
9
“In what ca-TEG-ory would you put Mr. James Joyce?” Or, for that matter, this film? Among other things, I’d call it the best gangster picture ever made. Orson Welles got the most mileage from it (including a radio spin-off that recast the swinish Harry Lime as a good-natured rogue), a renown I find difficult to fathom, given the superb ensemble work by Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, Bernard Lee, Wilfred Hyde-White, and a doctor who pronounces his name VINK-el. Carol Reed’s direction makes the most of every incident, and the whole package is tied up with one of the best musical scores ever.
10
One of my favorite films of recent years is A History of Violence, but I don’t share the notion that we are implicated in its violence. Where is the conflict in seeing psycho killers rubbed out? In Leonard Kastle’s sole film, however, we are painfully implicated. The victims, all defenseless women and a child, are brutally murdered in a context so unreasonably entertaining that we hate ourselves for not turning away. The setup for the most grueling of these murders appears to be an homage to the Turkish-bath scene in Children of Paradise.
They call him the Master of Suspense, and Alfred Hitchcock earned the moniker by crafting myriad classic films over the course of a 50-year career that spanned six decades. No one directed better thrillers, and no thrillers were better directed. Whether chronicling a man on the run, a woman in jeopardy, an international conspiracy, or a deeply disturbed psychotic, Hitchcock almost always strIkes the right tone, balancing tension and unease with elegant romance, sardonic wit, brutal irony, and sexual innuendo. Like any director, he both hits the bullseye and misses his mark on various occasions - though his 'misses' often outclass many of his colleagues 'hits.' The truly great Hitchcock pictures, however, tie together a riveting plot, thought-provoking themes, snappy dialogue, interesting locales, crackling chemistry between the leading actors, and Hitchcock's dazzling, inimitable, and omnipresent technique. Remarkably, this rare confluence of cinematic elements distinguishes not a few, but a bumper crop of Hitchcock films, including Notorious, which stands as not just a great Hitchcock picture, but as one of the director's crowning achievements and one of the best espionage movies ever made.
Notorious isn't flashy and slick. Rest assured, plenty of Hitchcock‘s patented artistry and invention dazzle the senses, but there are no chase scenes, no explosions, and no fisticuffs, save for a brief scuffle between co-stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Rather the film's power and allure stem from simmering undercurrents of personal conflict and political skullduggery that gradually wreak havoc on the characters' lives, ripping them to shreds on the inside while they put on a brave face for the world and stoically soldier on. Cutting barbs hide their hurt, but in an undercover milieu where duty trumps romance, longings go unfulfilled as the characters risk their lives and sacrifice their well-being in an effort to eradicate evil from our society. A noble profession, yes, but not one that yields many happy endings.
Party girl Alicia Huberman (Bergman) is the 'notorious' daughter of a Nazi sympathizer whose recent trial and conviction caused a sensation in Miami. In a futile effort to escape her shame and ease her pain, Alicia drinks to excess, dallies with too many men, and lives life on the edge. The U.S. government, however, views her as a potential ally, a tool to infiltrate a secretive circle of fugitive Nazis who have made Buenos Aires their center of operation. Agent Roger Devlin (Grant) recruits Alicia for the job and asks her to exploit her lineage to gain intimate access to the affairs of suspected Nazi conspirator Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), an old family friend who once pursued her romantically. Alicia's sense of guilt, desire to clear her name, and innate patriotism - as well as her burgeoning attraction to Devlin - outweigh her fear and doubts and convince her to take the assignment. Yet little does she know how far she will have to go to achieve the government's goals, and the personal toll this delicate, treacherous mission will exact.
From its opening frames, Notorious grabs the viewer with its elegance, intrigue, and complex characters. The spy plot is central to the film's engine, yet it takes a back seat to the frustrated romance between Alicia and Devlin, which ups the story's ante and makes the action more intimate and urgent. Though quashing the Nazi threat and seeing our country's ideals prevail matter deeply to the audience, more than anything we want Alicia and Devlin to overcome the odds, resolve their issues, and unite. Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht brilliantly juggle these two storylines, fashioning a different kind of suspense for each. Seeing Alicia walk willingly into a lion's den and navigate the pitfalls and dangers lurking around every corner of the Sebastian mansion creates one kind of tension, while watching her and Devlin silently deny and doubt their true feelings for each other because of their respective precarious positions creates another. And caught in the middle is Alex, the supposed villain of the piece, who's often a hapless mama's boy who somehow earns our sympathy and pity. His love for Alicia is real, yet his jealousy and inability to escape the domination of his mother (Madame Konstantin) put him in jeopardy as well.
The subtle layers and twisted relationships create a highly textured drama that casts a mesmerizing spell and is enhanced by Hitchcock's superior visual sense, impeccable production values, and excellent acting. Hitchcock is at the top of his game, employing off-kilter camera angles, distorted images, and one breathtaking boom shot to create stimulating scenes that thrust us further into the action. Some might mistake such artistry for gimmickry, but Hitchcock never overplays his hand, sparingly inserting these shots where they wield the most impact. He also fashions one of the sexiest love scenes to come out of Hollywood's Golden Age, an elongated kissing sequence between Alicia and Devlin photographed in close-up and peppered with whispered dialogue and tender caresses. Who knew that two fully clothed actors could generate such heat, but such is the mastery of Hitchcock, who relished pushing buttons, pushing envelopes, and pushing audiences to places they hadn't gone before.
Grant and Bergman are perfectly cast, and their pairing here is the stuff of legend. Grant retains a debonair air, but his clever repartee is often laced with venom and delivered with a square jaw. Rarely has Grant underplayed so effectively or conveyed so much with a narrowed glance, withering stare, or wounded squint. Though he expresses nothing, we know everything that's going on inside him - his intense love for Alicia, his jealousy, his concern, his bitterness, his fear. It's a far more difficult role than it appears on the surface, and yet Grant, in one of his most underrated and effective performances, makes it look easy. It's no wonder he became one of Hitchcock's favorite leading men. (He also starred in Suspicion, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest.)
And Bergman was one of his favorite leading ladies. She also appeared in Spellbound and Under Capricorn, but Notorious is without question her finest Hitchcock portrayal. As the brazen bad girl early in the film, Bergman exhibits a fascinating and rarely seen coarseness and cynicism. Later, as the starry-eyed lover, she's disarmingly natural and passionate. And still later, as the lady of the Sebastian manor whose mind focuses on the task at hand while her heart hemorrhages, she mixes a regal coolness with a savage vulnerability. Bergman won three Oscars during her long career, but it's shocking both she and Grant weren't nominated for their work here.
Rains was, and deservedly so. One of Hollywood's best character actors, Rains could play anything, and his finely etched portrait of Sebastian, a poor fool led astray by love and the calculating wiles of an attractive American agent, adds a welcome element of complexity to the espionage aspect of the film. And as his mother, a modern day Madame Defarge who quietly embroiders while her son tries to seal Alicia's fate, Madame Konstantin makes a strong impression. Like a puppeteer, she deftly manipulates Sebastian, and the scene where she calmly lights up a cigarette remains one of the film's most wryly amusing moments.
Criminally, Notorious was not nominated for Best Picture or Best Director (however it did pick up a Best Original Screenplay nod for Ben Hecht), yet the movie's Oscar snub doesn't diminish its worth. Though Hitchcock's reputation would continue to soar over the course of the next three decades, the stature of Notorious has never waned. It remains a stirring, absorbing, emotionally involving, and artistically satisfying film that hits all the right notes - a symphony of suspense, if you will, conducted with nuance and gusto by the genre's most accomplished maestro.
The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats
The Criterion edition of Notorious arrives on Blu-ray packaged in a standard Criterion case. A 12-page foldout booklet featuring an essay by Angelica Jade Bastien, a cast and crew listing, transfer notes, and portraits of Grant, Bergman, and Rains is tucked inside the front cover. Video codec is 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 and audio is LPCM mono. Once the disc is inserted into the player, the static menu with music immediately pops up; no previews or promos precede it.