Notorious (1946)

Notorious is yet another clinic on how to direct a movie by the master Alfred Hitchcock. Although I don't consider Notorious to be one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, even his lesser films are still extraordinary. The film stars Ingrid Bergman, whose beauty I believe is overrated but acting ability most certainly is not. Ms. Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a German-American found guilty for treason and working with the Nazi government. Alicia does not agree with her father's politics, and the American government is aware of this and sends in T.R. Devlin, played by the masterful Cary Grant, to try and persuade her to come and work for them down in Rio de Janeiro to take down some prominent Nazi leaders who have taken refuge in Brazil. Devlin succeeds in convincing her and they are soon aboard a flight to Brazil. The mission that they will be working on together is still in the developmental stages so the two of them have some free time to get to know each other, and end up falling in love. This, of course, becomes a problem when the mission is revealed to them and involves Alicia's convincing of her father's old friend Alex Sebastian (who has been in love with her for a long time) that she is in love with him. In order for Devlin to deal with this he becomes very brash towards Alicia, which causes her to become very deeply involved in this undercover mission. Notorious is a fantastic film, definitely worth seeing. However it gets off to a rather slow start, but don't be disheartened. Overall 3.5/4 Stars Grade = B+