Notorious (1946) Alfred Hitchcock

[OldCorpse]

I recently re-watched Notorious, the 1946 Alfred Hitchcock acclaimed film:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038787/

The critics and audiences seem to be in agreement - they love it! RT score for critics is 98% and audiences 91%:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1015287_notorious

I confess to not understanding what it is that excites anyone about this film. It's a complete dud, as far as I'm concerned. There's not a single thing in this film that works. Technically, it's abysmal with super clumsy rear projection for street scenes(!) - bad enough when it's done for cars, which is done here too (and just because Hitchcock did it frequently doesn't mean it was ever any good in any of his films), but to tease the audience that we're going to Sao Paulo Brazil, and then drop in this atrocious mess is just a crime. The one place where Hitchcock tried to spice things up made no sense - the one where Ingrid Bergman's character wakes up and looks at Cary Grant and as he circles around the camera turns upside down - all in supposedly her POV, although why we see her POV at this moment when we never had this convention employed in the rest of the movie, oh well, no explanation - simply Hitchcock did it, because why not. Feh. The plot makes no sense, but I guess Hitchcock would claim it's just a McGuffin that doesn't matter - fine. But in this case it's actively lame. Then the acting. Except for the always excellent Claude Raines, the acting is poor. I'm probably alone in my opinion that Ingrid Bergman was never very good (even in Casablanca - the weakest link), but here she's particularly bad - "acting" for all she's worth, and she ain't worth much. Cary Grant just feels out of his depth for the role, his suave easy going schtick just doesn't match the needs of the role. The whole thing feels draggy in many places, there is no real tension of any kind, it's talky, talky, talky as heck, and really boils down to a bad soap opera. I just found myself bored to tears waiting for something to come of it, for any scene with any tension in it, instead it had all the tension of a wet deflated bra. Why do critics and audiences love it - I have no earthly idea. YMMV.

 

[Mitch Gross]

To each their own. I love it.

 

[Cary Knoop]

I love this film as well, it's a classic!

Granted those rear projection screens is something you can't get away with nowadays but apart from that I can't say I agree with anything OldCorpse states.

But then his title is: Rockin the Boat!

 

[OldCorpse]

People will have differing reactions, that's par for the course and quite natural. I don't intentionally try to be a contrarian, or intentionally "rock the boat" - I've just gotten used to trusting my senses and my judgment and the ability not to be influenced by critical or audience consensus. That can be good or bad, but it's true to how I see it. Even if the whole world tells me that "movie X is a deathless masterpiece" and I'm not seeing it in that light, I still go with my judgment. That might be a flaw, but I find it useful more often than not.

There was a thread awhile ago here on films that have not held up. I find that it's useful to sometimes re-watch a movie you've seen a very long time ago, because you're a different person today than when you were perhaps very young or didn't have the experiences you've had since. So I don't know how long ago you've seen Notorious, and whether that's a factor or not.

But even with all those caveats, I can certainly understand a situation where a film cannot be defended rationally with arguments, but for some reason one just likes it. I too have this - f.ex. my wife can't stand 99% of the Hong Kong kung-fu movies, while I am quite happy watching them... I understand objectively all the flaws they have, but for some odd reason I still like 'em, while a different movie with these flaws would have me turning it off.

Be that as it may, Notorious just doesn't grab me. Some of it is objective - f.ex. I think I can argue pretty persuasively that it's technically poor to mediocre wrt. camera blocking, lighting, staging and so on, because Hitchock has done all this so much better in other movies. I also believe I am on solid ground claiming that there is very little tension in almost all the scenes in this film, as compared to many other Hitchcock movies and movies of the era in general. But acting - well, there it's more subjective, and harder to prove anything... if Bergman and Grant grab you here, well, I have a different opinion, but hey, there's nothing I can "prove" here. It did strike me as a very talky movie, but again, that may be a matter of taste. The general ambiance of the film to me is extremely old-fashioned in a "Arsenic And Old Lace" kind of a way, with sumptious sets filled with tedious socialites. Nothing genuine here, no feeling of a real human being walking through these theatrical sets. None of the stakes make any sense (to me), the dull goings on in the wine cellar are both physically clumsy and psychologically uninvolving. And - again, subjective - I didn't feel any chemistry between Grant and Bergman, even allowing for the melodramatic premise. So I was searching what to rest my eyes on, and finding nothing much, since the camera work was dull, the lighting dull, the sets standard, the situations parlor room quality. When you go through crime writing history (and subsequently cinema), there's the old fashioned kind of parlor room crime dramas with a Detective Poirot type gathering the guests in a nice living room or study and then laying out the crime and with a sweep removing a handkerchief and revealing an ornate dagger dripping with blood. Then crime writing and cinema moved onto something much more gritty and filled with life outside the drawing room and aristocratic salons - Hemmet, Chandler and Film Noir. Notorious feels so old fashioned for 1946 with still the earlier era of lace curtains and parlor rooms and poisoned coffee(!) when the world was moving away into gritty Film Noir and the modern age where guns and bombs and knives were out... in fact, the convention of poisoning your victim feels positively Victorian, like something out of a Conan Doyle novel. It portrays an innocent age and gentlemen's disagreements. Not exactly something that grabs you by the unmentionables, rather something you might watch with a tumbler of cognac and the Financial Times in your lap.

But hey, I can fully understand someone still liking it for whatever reason, and anyone who can find joy in a film has had their life enriched. Me, personally, I saw it when I was maybe 15, and upon rewatching it, found it profoundly lacking - but that's just me. YMMV.

 

[Jim Feeley]

I liked it a lot. If you don't, no worries. But give this shot another gander and remember Ted Tetzlaff and his team pulled this off in the 1940s without autofocus and drones. ;-). But seriously, this is both technically and narratively cool:

 

[Cary Knoop]

Well, what's a film you do like from the same period, say between 1944 and 1950?

 

[OldCorpse]

Well, what's a film you do like from the same period, say between 1944 and 1950?

Oh, about a million, I'd guess , but one I mentioned in a recent post here is Out of the Past (1947), directed by Jacques Tourneur, I mentioned it as an excellent film in contrast to the same director responsible for the atrocious Nightfall (1956) which I discussed just a few posts down.

Now, take any aspect of Out of the Past and it's vastly - vastly - superior to Notorious: cinematography, script, dialogue, acting, tension and suspense, mood and ambiance and so on. They are separated by a year, and yet the mentality is like night and day, with Out of the Past a far more adult and real feeling for both characters and predicaments. Both directed by hyphenated Americans, Hitchcock British-American, Tourneur French-American. Film Noir of course emerged much earlier than Notorious, with f.ex. the excellent Billy Wilder movie "Double Indemnity" (1944) - again, by mentality head and shoulders above parlor drama/melodrama Notorious. And directed by another European transplant who made a fabulous career in America. We could go on and on just with the hybrid Americans, like Otto Preminger who directed Laura (1944), again, superior to Notorious. And by no means did a director have to work in the U.S. in order to make superior movies - in the time period you specified, there was the masterpiece from Kurosawa Rashomon (1950), which by mentality was a revolution in pushing narrative film as an artform into new frontiers - or for that matter, check out Kurosawa's movie from the year before Stray Dog (1949), again a vastly more original and engaging movie compared to Notorious.

But really, there are too many films to mention, all vastly superior to Notorious within roughly the same period of time, all B&W, dealing with crime and criminal acts, so roughly within the same genre.

 

[Cary Knoop]

Thanks for explaining which movies you like.

Film Noir of course emerged much earlier than Notorious, with f.ex. the excellent Billy Wilder movie "Double Indemnity" (1944) - again, by mentality head and shoulders above parlor drama/melodrama Notorious.

That is indeed a great movie.

Interesting that you characterize Notorious as film-noir, perhaps that is the underlying reason why you are disappointed with Notorious?
Personally I do not classify Notorious as film-noir.

 

[Batutta]

I saw it for the first time a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it. I was simply entertained by it. But the Hitchcock I'd never seen before and LOVED which I also saw recently was Strangers on a Train.

 

[OldCorpse]

Sorry, Cary, I didn't mean to convey that I classify Notorious as film noir - I don't. I expressed myself poorly. Here's what I meant - that the parlor room crime novel (and film) was a convention for a long time, going back to Victorian times, and early film reflected that. Film Noir came later, on the heels of a more gritty crime writing kicked off by Dashiell Hammet, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain etc. - all of whose novels were made into films, the quintessential film noir - examples, which I didn't mention above, because there are so many brilliant films, would be The Maltese Falcon (1941) directed by John Huston based on Dashiell Hammet's novel, or The Postman Always Rings Twice (1944) based on James M. Cain's novel or of course various famous Chandler novel based films like The Big Sleep (1946) directed by Howard Hawks and Murder, My Sweet (1944) by Edward Dmytryk. And again, all of these are far better than Notorious. The reason I mentioned Notorious in the context of film noir, was to say that it was a film in the much older parlor room tradition which was really old fashioned, and really kind of behind the times, given that film noir emerged earlier than 1946, so it's not like Hitchcock didn't see or know about a much more modern and adult approach - my point being is that already back then, in the late 30's a much more vital approach (film noir) developed, so a throwback to a parlor room drama like Notorious was particularly lame. Other films of that same era did so much better than Notorious. So, no, I certainly don't classify Notorious as film noir (nor the above mentioned movies by Kurosawa - Rashomon and Stray Dog), I classify it in the much more old fashioned tradition. Note, btw., that all those films are much more discussed today compared to Notorious - The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Rashomon - these are constantly discussed to this day... who discusses Notorious outside of mentioning it as one of Hitcock's films? It brought nothing to the art of cinema. It was not a milestone of any kind. It broke no barriers, it established no precedent. It was a film of its time, that did not pass the test of time. Those other movies - both before and after - continue to be admired and discussed (including many great Hitchcock films), but Notorious is a footnote in film history of crime movies.

 

[Cary Knoop]

... who discusses Notorious outside of mentioning it as one of Hitcock's films? It brought nothing to the art of cinema. It was not a milestone of any kind. It broke no barriers, it established no precedent. It was a film of its time, that did not pass the test of time. Those other movies - both before and after - continue to be admired and discussed (including many great Hitchcock films), but Notorious is a footnote in film history of crime movies.

Well, I think for a film to be good it could be but does not have to be innovating.

Also, I would not characterize Notorious as a crime movie, it's suspense I think of first when I watch Notorious.

 

[OldCorpse]

Well, I think for a film to be good it could be but does not have to be innovating.

Also, I would not characterize Notorious as a crime movie, it's suspense I think of first when I watch Notorious.

Fine, we can call it "suspense" - although, c'mon, it's a "suspense" movie notably lacking in suspense, and by that measure fails at the most fundamental level - I mean, let us be real honest here... where was there suspense?! The most you could claim would be at the very end, when they all descend that staircase, with Claude Raines under pressure. I mean suspense is really, really hard to find in this movie. Btw. I was just rewatching with my wife various Hitchcock movies (that's how I just saw "Notorious"), and yesterday we watched the 1956 version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - a vastly more suspensful movie by any way you'd care to measure - not just that famous - and long, long, long! - concert scene waiting for the cymbal crash, but really almost throughout, every few scenes you have legit prolonged tension and suspense! No comparison! It even also had a "going down the staircase" scene, with Stewart, the bad guy with the gun and the little kid, lol.

As a matter of fact, it's funny you mention suspense, as that's one of the things I was looking for in this movie given the premise. We are supposed to watch a woman insinuate herself into a dangerous group of bad guys and you'd think the suspense would be something one could really experience from the suspense master Hitchcock. Instead, there was just about zero. And it starts with the MacGuffin - the thing Hitchcock pronounces unimportant, but which in this case, sorry, is so poor that it actually becomes important insofar is it impacts the very sensation we're supposed to experience: "suspense". Because c'mon, you're trying to scare us with Nazis? In 1946, after they've just been resoundingly defeated? And not even holed up in some dangerous place under their control in Europe, or some remote area, but in sunny Sao Paulo, Brazil! A bunch of older men in dinner jackets talking out of the sides of their mouths in a sumptious mansion, but oooh, scary, a real mean granny, prospective mother-in-law in a lacy dress... oh God! the suspense is killing us, how will we ever stand it!!!UNO!! Note, how we witness no real physical demonstration of any danger, no dead bodies, no injuries even. At least in The Man Who Knew Too Much, you have a stabbing and a guy with the knife in his back who dies in Stewart's arms. You are creating no sense of danger. It's a soap opera. These kinds of fundamental establishments of the premise are fatally flawed in Notorious. Hitchcock was fully capable of generating some shocking violence (not just in Psycho!), but here he just miscalculated. No, you don't need physical violence to escalate tension or establish danger, but if you don't establish "danger!" by other means - which Hitchcock doesn't in Notorious - then you gotta give us something, or else we find it about as threatening as a crossword puzzle.

But as is, it's just stupid. The house is under observation, the local authorities are aware of it, the American government has agents all over the place, even the main bad guy Claude Raines chats with our debonair agent Cary Grant and is fully aware of the Americans interest in him and his business. Where in the world is the sense of danger we need to generate suspense? I tend to agree with Hitchcock that the MacGuffin is not key, but I think there are limits, your plot has to have just enough elements to make the danger plausible, not so anodyne that we fall asleep. I think he muffed it in this case. There's more suspense in an average episode of Murder She Wrote. It's the kind of film elderly fans of Matlock might watch for all the suspense it generates.

I agree that not every film has to innovate. But it does have to bring something to the table, that something being at least fulfilling its most basic genra mandate. A romance has to have romance in it, or it fails in its primary mission. A comedy has to be funny, or it fails in its primary mission. And a suspense film has to have suspense in it, or it fails in its primary mission. That's a failure at the most fundamental level. And so my #1 complaint about Notorious is not lack of innovation, but its abysmal failure at the most fundamental level - it fails as suspense. Again, YMMV.

 

[Cary Knoop]

Fine, we can call it "suspense" - although, c'mon, it's a "suspense" movie notably lacking in suspense, and by that measure fails at the most fundamental level - I mean, let us be real honest here... where was there suspense?! The most you could claim would be at the very end, when they all descend that staircase, with Claude Raines under pressure. I mean suspense is really, really hard to find in this movie.

I think the film is loaded with suspense:

1. The possibility of Alicia being discovered by the NAZIs
2. The possibility of Alex's mistake being discovered by the NAZIs
3. Alicia getting poisoned, can Devlin save her in time?
4. The contrasting love/using relation between Alica and Devlin

Sure it is not suspense in the way of "Will the killer stab with the knife now?", it's, as you indeed say in an earlier posting, much wordier.

Because c'mon, you're trying to scare us with Nazis? In 1946, after they've just been resoundingly defeated? And not even holed up in some dangerous place under their control in Europe, or some remote area, but in sunny Sao Paulo, Brazil! A bunch of older men in dinner jackets talking out of the sides of their mouths in a sumptious mansion, but oooh, scary, a real mean granny, prospective mother-in-law in a lacy dress... oh God! the suspense is killing us, how will we ever stand it!!!UNO!!

Well, I think that is a bit overdone. Suspense can be subtle, it doesn't have to be about "ax murderers" only.

But as is, it's just stupid. The house is under observation, the local authorities are aware of it, the American government has agents all over the place, even the main bad guy Claude Raines chats with our debonair agent Cary Grant and is fully aware of the Americans interest in him and his business. Where in the world is the sense of danger we need to generate suspense? I tend to agree with Hitchcock that the MacGuffin is not key, but I think there are limits, your plot has to have just enough elements to make the danger plausible, not so anodyne that we fall asleep. I think he muffed it in this case. There's more suspense in an average episode of Murder She Wrote. It's the kind of film elderly fans of Matlock might watch for all the suspense it generates.

Granted, this setting is a bit simple.

And so my #1 complaint about Notorious is not lack of innovation, but its abysmal failure at the most fundamental level - it fails as suspense. Again, YMMV.

It seems we have to agree to disagree on that one.

 

[OldCorpse]

Ha, ha, I guess we've long since agreed to disagree - but to me it's always interesting to try to understand (even if I don't agree) a different point of view, which is why I've continued to roll with this thread . People see the world differently, that's understandable.

Re: Alicia being discovered by the Nazis, or as you put it NAZIs. To me that they are NAZIs is a downgrade - if not total collapse - of suspense. It's like bbbbut what if she's discovered by Bluto from Popeye the Sailor Man? The Nazis were just defeated so thoroughly, that the world moved on almost immediately into forgetting WWII. There was no lingering threat the way we have these days with war on terror, where just taking over, say, Afghanistan is a pyrrhic kind of "victory", because the threats linger on. Here the Nazis were demolished - and the world moved on into a whole new era so fast it ended up changing the society, the economy and the mentality of the world. So a few elderly Nazis in the capital of Brazil, lol, holed up in a mansion right under the noses of local and American authorities with full awareness? And really, the Nazis are threatening only or primarily in an organization backed by state power. That's what the threat and dread of Nazis is at essence - organized, mass state terror. Outside of that context - as it is here - a collection of nostalgically plotting elders living out their fantasies in pie in the sky plots, is pathetic at most. These are just a collection of guys who need to up their prostate meds so they can go to the bathroom and get relief. Outside of wielding state power, Nazis are less concerning than zombies. And here I am not kidding, I'm totally serious - I'd find it FAR, far, far more threatening if Alicia were trying to penetrate a terrorist organization, or a criminal mafia organization, or really just a gang of cutthroat desperados. But Nazis? Under observation? I find it severly lacking... the main baddie lives with his mom and under her thumb, lol! I hope she doesn't catch him sneaking extra cookies after dinner, or he'll really be in for it, lol! Honestly, it's a premise more suited to comedy, a la The Producers, where the Nazi thing is an object of humor, or Hogan's Heroes (both much better than Notorious, btw., because they're genuinely funny, thus at leat fulfilling their basic genre requirement).

And Alex being discovered by the NAZIs - you've gotta be kidding. The most that would've happened was that his cover would be blown, so he wouldn't get any more invites to the mansion parties - which is in fact what ultimately happened, after his dastardly wine cellar bottle swapping was belatedly discovered by the resident criminal genius Nazi. Alex was never under physical threat, the tension was of losing a promotion in case he didn't discover what the eeevil Nazis were cooking up in their Brazilian retirement, boy that suspense has me twisting my socks... what if he really has to go on a posting to Spain! Spain! Oh, the horror of it all!

Alicia getting poisoned - oh the humanity! So emasculated are the Nazis, so completely bereft of any threat capability, that the poor schmucks can't even use such violent means as a gun! No guns, gentlemen! Ouch! So they are forced into poisoning, cause really, they got nothing, not even a pocket knife. After all, they're all watched by a thousand eyes - in the "clever" Hitchcock premise of diminishing the feeling of danger at every turn, lol - again, I say, fundamentally miscalculated if you are looking for suspense. They're reduced to poisoning the coffee, like in your aunt's paperback crime novel. Can Devlin save her in time? I experience the same amount of suspense when I wonder if Elmer Fudd will finally get Bugs Bunny.

The relationship between Devlin and Alicia, as I experience it, completely lacks any suspense or tension. The use/love thing feels fake as all get out. But if you really look at what's supposed to be at play here is the hope of the audience that Alicia and Devlin will end up together - that's it, wish fulfillment. Sum total of that tension. And here's the kicker - you wish for that, if you believe what these two actors are selling. Trouble starts when you don't perceive any chemistry between them, and so you are not pulling for them to end up together, because you picture them at opposite ends of the room having nothing to say to each other. There's no romantic/sexual spark there - as far as I can see (although granted, endless prattling on and on and on). Now, sure, this is an individual reaction. You - and clearly many others - have a different reaction and they buy this couple. No harm, no foul. Opinions will differ. So I can see how this might generate suspense, but for reasons I enumerated, it just doesn't work for me.

 

[Cary Knoop]

I think it was implied that the discovery of Alex's serious misjudgment would have caused him to follow Emil's footsteps.
Using poison was deemed necessary by Alex's mother because the elimination of Alicia had to be done in an inconspicuous way in order to cover up Alex's mistake.

With respect to the love interaction between Devlin and Alicia, I find it a bit of a distraction from the main story actually.
But eh, what can you expect, it's Hollywood after all.

 

[OldCorpse]

I think it was implied that the discovery of Alex's serious misjudgment would have caused him to follow Emil's footsteps.
Using poison was deemed necessary by Alex's mother because the elimination of Alicia had to be done in an inconspicuous way in order to cover up Alex's mistake.

With respect to the love interaction between Devlin and Alicia, I find it a bit of a distraction from the main story actually.
But eh, what can you expect, it's Hollywood after all.

All true - and I glossed over it, because the relevant part was that it all served to diminish the danger and sense of threat that is necessary for suspense to operate, and the details you mention serve to weaken the sense of danger even further. The fact that the bad guys were themselves internally divided and fearing each other, makes the "gang" such as it is, even weaker yet. I mean, now Claude Raines has to hide his actions from the other bad guys, so all he has left is some slow acting poison that needs multiple doses over many days to be effective. The weak only get weaker. It's not even the power of a well organized and cohesive gang.

But this whole threat scenario and the utter botch that was made of it, prompts me to write a bit more about the Nazi debacle I alluded to before: a fundamental mistake in understanding how threatening villains work. How can you make your villian(s) effective? Everybody understands that you have to maximise their power, so that the perceived threat to our hero is the greatest and the predicament most dire. Unfoturately, Hitchcock (and screenwriter Hecht) appear to have completely misunderstood that dynamic in the case of organized villains, thinking "NAZI" is enough.

On the surface of it, saying the bad guys are NAZIs seems to increase the threat. But it all depends on context. In some contexts that's true. In other contexts it's exactly the opposite. Like I mentioned before, the power of political villians derives from the power of the state behind them. We fear Nazis, because they can call upon the power of Nazi Germany. Absent that power, their threat collapses. It's exactly the same with other political villains. The film industry has long lived off the threat of "OMG, COMMUNISTS!". But note, that this power is much diminished when those commies are not in their own country. We fear much less for our hero if he stumbles into a meeting of commies in Topeka Kansas, but we fear a great deal, if he's in Moscow, the USSR. We don't worry as much about Nazis in Florida, or Sao Paulo, but worry about them if they're in Nazi Germany or territories under their control. If the power of their state is distant - less worry - if near, more worry.

Things change even more drastically, if the power of the state is no longer behind them, because the state that supported them has collapsed or been defeated. If Nazi Germany has been defeated, or if the USSR has collapsed, how worried would we be if our hero stumbled into a den of communists... what, they'll cram Karl Marx books down his throat and suffocate him? Now, you are taking a band of Nazis (or Communists) from a defeated/collapsed country and they are not even in their own country but some other country? Threat level collapses. What else could have been done? What if those Nazis are somewhere in a remote area that nobody knows about - the jungles of Paraguay or Brazil - perhaps some small danger charge (The Boys From Brazil), but Hitchock/Hecht managed to fumble even that, putting the gang right in the capital of a state that's friendly to the U.S.! The isolation of the jungle is like isolation in every horror/crime film, it works, because the forces of rescue are far away - but here we don't have isolation, the rescue is a taxi-ride away from the front of the house (ending of "Notorious"). If at least the Nazis were holed up in some unknown house in Sao Paulo, you'd have the prospect of tension of "where?!" to threaten our heroes, but once again, Hitchcock decided to diminish the threat by placing them in a sumptious mansion well known to the authorities and American agents, with full knowledge of the "Nazis". A more limp-wristed danger would be hard to conjure.

Now that Hitchcock/Hecht managed to thoroughly defang and infantilize the "NAZIs", he'd not done yet, because he decides to weaken and ridicule the head villain further if at all possible - a mama's boy fearful of the rest of the gang, and dumb as they come. And the security at that place - lol, Devlin simply waltzes in without an appointment (after Claude Raines is fully aware that he's an American agent), and then wanders the halls taking his sweet time to locate the unguarded Alice and simply opens the unlocked door and there has another one of those lengthy conversations with Alice, and criminal anti-genius Claude Raines waits patiently for Devlin to complete all these actions. At this point, it's no suprise that the way out is simply calling a taxi. So much for making the villain powerful.

But let's look at how Nazis (and Communits) are treated in film, when the writer/director actually understands that dynamic of what makes Nazis/Communists threatening. First, it happens when Nazi German is still in full power - as depicted in the movie Casablanca (1942) - (of course, a vastly superior movie to Notorious) Rick and Ilsa could be arrested by the Nazis, because the area is still under Nazi control; can you imagine how the stakes and tension and suspense would collapse if they were instead in Sao Paulo (even if it was 1942) and the local state power was not under Nazi control as in North Africa, but under America-friendly regime? Even in purely entertainment/adventure movies like Indiana Jones, when Nazis were invoked, it was in the 30's and they had state power behind them. Or take the case of a movie where Nazi power was defeated, but you wanted to maintain some survivor Nazi threats, look at how that was handled in The Third Man (1949), you don't go off into a tropical climate merry old Sao Paulo and its cafes, but war devastated Vienna, where competing powers were struggling for supremacy, partly occupied by the menacing Stalinist USSR, people scrabbling for food and survival, criminal gangs of smugglers and unrepentant Nazis, everybody battling it out, villains and heroes chasing each other in city sewers, not sumptious mansions with parties and champagne - and even here, the Nazis were hardly the point, it was about crime, war profiteering and uncertain loyalties and bonds of friendship. Oh, what a dramatic contrast - with The Third Man so vastly superior to Notorious, you don't even know where to begin - cinematography, script, acting, music, characters, dialogue, or the superb mood creation.

Same with the various Communist plots - even Hitchcock put our hero in danger in Communist Eastern Germany in Torn Curtain (1966) - and as soon as Communism collapsed in the USSR, the number of films featuring Communism collapsed right along - the only time Commies or Nazis are invoked in film, are in period settings when they were still in power (except jokey things like Zombie Nazis).

So we can establish a rough hierarchy of danger levels and the resulting suspense potential from the strongest to the weakest:

1) Nazi villains in the heart of Nazi Germany (for Commies USSR, N. Korea etc.) - Max Threat level 1

2) Nazis in areas they control fully or with axis allies (Casablanca - French Vichy collaborators) - Threat level 2

3) Nazis in areas they don't control, but Nazi Germany is still around - Threat level 3

4) Nazi Germany has been defeated, but Nazis are still around in Nazi Germany, Austria and so on - Threat level 4

5) Nazi Germany has been defeated, but surviving Nazis are holed up in some third world country, deep in an isolated secret location (The Boys From Brazil) - Threat level 5

6) Nazi Germany is gone, but surviving Nazis are holed up in a secret location in a major city in some country - Threat level 6

7) Nazi Germany is gone, but the surviving Nazis are in the capital city, tropical location, galavanting about in a sumptious mansion, under full supervision of local authorieties and American agents, with lax security, free to enter for American agents with no appointment and wandering about with no supervision - Threat level 0 - Notorious for lack of suspense.

And there you have it. With the villain in addition ludicrously devoid of power and menace and brains on top of everything else - where a dangerous villain is super smart and super organized, we have a mama's boy and a dunce of epic proportion who can't even control his own buddies.

Since the sense of danger is directly related to the suspense you can get out of it, I have to say, the suspense in Notorious is non-existant. It is a movie so devoid of suspense that they filled it with endless chatter of two lovers whose chemistry is also zero.

So we've established that the power of Nazis (and Communists and Royalists or whatever political system) derives from an active state power. Without that, it's defanged. That is in contrast with things like the Mafia - because the Mafia is still around, and its threat is not dependent on state power. Even common criminals in a gang - they are menacing because they are a constant feature of all societies, unaccountable and often unpredictable and therefore dangerous. Nazis/Communists are ideologues we're not in agreement with, but they represent an ideology, they are not criminals per se, even if they act illegally and ruthlessly. Now, if you remove their state power, you're left with political opponents, unlike a criminal who has no ideology and is a criminal per se, bound only to his own criminal mind, immune to the society norms around him. A Nazi outside of Nazi state power is always going to be less menacing than a criminal, a gangster, a mafioso. Which is why Hitchcock should have had Alicia infiltrate a Nazi group either in Nazi Germany, or infiltrate a group of criminals or terrorists. Going with powerless Nazis was the very bottom of the threat scale, and consequently, the 0 suspense score.

Hitchcock and Hecht botched it epically. There is zero suspense in a movie that depends on suspense. FAIL. All IMHO, of course, and YMMV.

 

[Cary Knoop]

Since the sense of danger is directly related to the suspense you can get out of it, ...

You see that's where we disagree.

Interesting you mention Casablanca and The Third Man. The Third Man, to me, is extraordinary, near the top of the pyramid, simply a masterpiece. Casablanca is good, slightly better than Notorious, but Notorious is still really good in my opinion.