Notorious (1946) 🍷🔑💔

“When I don’t love you, I’ll let you know”

When we talk about Hitchcock, we often talk about his best work — Psycho, Vertigo, etc. But we tend to leave out all the formulaic thrillers he pumped out, sometimes 3 times a year, from 1925 to the late 1950s. Notorious is a shining stand out from his 1940 filmography, thanks to some fun shadows, intense close-ups, and the undeniable chemistry between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. So much of this story rides on the desire these two characters feel for each other, and it very much feels like a mutual attraction. It’s so incredibly rare to see female desire expressed like this, especially from this decade, ESPECIALLY from Hitchcock.

The infamous stop-and-start kissing scene that spans 2+ minutes in order to avoid Hays code penalties (they mandated that onscreen kisses could only be 3 seconds long) sets up the running motif around physical intimacy, or lack thereof, throughout the rest of the movie. It’s striking how soft and careful they are with each other. In the final scene, Grant’s character doesn’t charge in, guns blazing, to save the day, he does it with calculated whispers. Both characters feel almost anachronistic.

Despite being now recognized as one of the most iconic directors of all time, Hitchcock lost all five of the Oscar nominations that he received for best director in his career. I find it sort of soothing to know that someone with such prolific contributions to film never won the biggest (arguably) award of the industry. The Academy did give him a lifetime achievement award in 1968, and his entire acceptance speech was “Thank you very much indeed.”