7.4.09: NOTORIOUS

NOTORIOUS (1946, RKO)

dir. Alfred Hitchcock; starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains

Before I launch into my little spiel on Notorious, I'd like to take a second to acknowledge the fact that, five days into this project, I am already behind. As it stands, to catch up, I'm going to have to give myself a triple feature tomorrow. We shall see if I hold myself to it. The point is, I suck.

You know what doesn't suck? Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, which I had marked as a film I had not seen before, and then within the first four minutes of watching it, I realized “Oh riiiiight.” Now, this doesn't mean I don't love Notorious; it occurs to me that this movie happens to be forgettable only because it has the unlucky quality of being a Hitchcock. I may be alone on this, but while I think it's a fantastic movie, when your brain is filled with Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope, et. al., Notorious leaves a slightly less indelible impression.

Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that, although Notorious is (rightfully) classified as a noir, it does not look much like one. Not that there aren't dynamic angles, since there are, or that there is no stark interplay between shadow and light, because there is. No, it is because noir is a visual style that is, by definition, is somewhat vague and stretched out, developed by numerous directors and photographers over dozens of works. Notorious draws much more from a singular, focused style: Hitchcock. His meticulous mise-en-scene is here. His intelligent, watchful eye of a camera is here. His striking pushes and pulls are here. The precise shots of the Unica key, the single tear on Bergman's cheek, the date on the wine bottle. Watching this movie, one is seeing a Hitchcock first, and a noir second.

Visual style and my shitty memory notwithstanding, Notorious has some great noir dialogue, since Bergman and Grant are not just the two most beautiful humans to have ever lived, much alone shared a screen, they are also phenomenal together. That being said, and no disrespect to C.G. here (and for a man who plays the lovable but wacky leading man so often, he does a startlingly good job at playing hard boiled here), but looking over my notes, I happen to see that the lady Bergman gets all the best lines:

“The important drinking hasn't started yet.” [For what is noir without the constant inhalation of alcohol?]

“People like you oughta be in bed.” [Drunkenly slurred to a motorcycle cop, both re-affirming the Two Americas of noir and making Bergman beautiful and a badass.]

“That word gives me pain... waving the flag with one hand and picking the pocket with the other.” [Speaking of patriotism; we'll talk about patriotism and capitalism more in other movies, especially Out of the Past and Gilda.]

Grant does, however, participate in one of the film's best back-and-forths, which alludes to the prevailing sense in noir that is the past forever inescapable, that the Thug Come Into Money, he still be a thug, the No-Good Made Good, he still be no good. During a lunch in Rio, well before the real intrigue of the Nazis and mystery and oh who cares Hitchcock practically invented the MacGuffin these two are the real story, Devlin (C. Grant) pokes fun at Huberman's (I. Bergman) newfound teetotaling. She coyly replies,

Huberman: “You don't think a woman can change?”

Devlin: “Change is fun... for a while.”

And certainly, these lovers have a hard time ever trusting each other to move beyond their pasts. Huberman never believes Devlin loves her, that he will always be a dispassionate cop using her as a pawn. Devlin never believes Huberman truly loves him and no one else, that her assignment to act as loving wife to a Nazi sympathizer is just a job to her. One can hardly blame them; their love affair begins with deceit. His coy playboy is a mask for his federal agent with a mission; her irreverent drunk is a mask for her passionate American loyalist. Even once they kiss, he never says “I love you” and Huberman reminds him often that she does not believe he does.

It is, of course, the turmoil in the lovers' relationship that drives the film, but this is not uncommon in any style or genre. What we see here, though, is a common device in noir: they reach the “happy ending” much too soon. They kiss, they are in love, they are in paradise. How tragic for our heroes, then, that we are only 20 minutes into the movie. The goal of the noir is not to work and struggle towards happiness. Noir often struggles towards, and achieves, peace and stability – then destroys it. Even noirs with a happy ending, like this one, show you that we are constantly reaching “happy endings” in our lives, but that these are impermanent and unstable.

The actual ending, of course, is a happy one, all things considered. Also, in the final scene, it is made finally and unavoidably clear that the “plot” of the film, the mystery of war criminals and espionage, is secondary at best. Common film structure (bear with me here as I get obnoxiously Theory for a second) has the “A” plot, the actual events and intrigue that advance the story, and the “B” plot, virtually always the love story. The climax of the film is where both plots reach their culmination/conclusion, almost always with one plot's solution being the last puzzle piece needed to solve the other plot (“Why, my normally-stoic employee, with your uncharacteristic marriage proposal to the woman you've been bantering with for 90 minutes, you've convinced me you've got the values and morals I'm looking for in my next regional manager!” for example). However! By the climactic scene of Notorious, the “A” mystery has essentially been solved, and wasn't that important to the viewer anyway. Instead, the final scene is all about the love between Huberman and Devlin; we are here to see if they finally fall into perfect love. So is the baffling paradox of the noir: the intrigue is so complex, so intricate, but we are really here to see the “B” plot, the interpersonal struggle. And yet, they are classified as noir, as crime, as thriller, almost never as romance. So it goes.

A final note on the final shot of the film: Claude Rains, the Axis conspirator Alexander Sebastian, walks back to his house where he will surely be killed by his cohorts now that it is all but obvious he has allowed an American agent to discover their plot. Again, noir is not about the violence, but the everpresent looming threat of violence. Violence is momentary and jarring, but passes. The threat can be feared for as long as it is strung out; Hitchcock understood this better than most (see Bomb Theory). In The Public Enemy, we see Tom Powers point a gun at Putty Nose's head, and the camera slides away until we just hear the bang, and thud. Here, the technique of using only the implication of death is taken to a new level. Sebastian walks in, the door closes behind him, and the film is over. We will never see him die. For us, he is forever and ever About To Die. The past is inescapable. The future is uncertain. This is the timeline of noir.