Notorious

I am not the sort of Hitchcock idolator who reads profundity into his psychological quirks, but I do appreciate the strangeness of this film as a product of Hollywood. Behind the artifice, sometimes perfunctory and sometimes highly stylized, lurks a quality of twisted obsession that is the Hitchcock trademark. I doubt there are two stars who have ever held the screen more brightly than Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, so those tight two-shots are bound to work. Through back-projection, the Rio setting is no more than stage dressing, and by now it seems a wonder that such feeble fool-the-eye ever worked for film audiences. But those sweeping crane shots up and down the curving marble staircase still work for sure, long after the zoom has been pretty much retired as camera trick, except when combined with a tracking shot in the oft-imitated technique Hitchcock pioneered. He certainly was a master of visual disorientation, and there are many such shots in this film, but the casual filler is disconcerting to me, the tossed-off illusion undermining the magic of the rest. Besides star power and dazzling direction, this film has Claude Rains and a stereotyped but effective supporting cast, but for me it remains superior entertainment, and despite the subtexts, not a serious work of engagement. (1946, dvd, r.) *7*