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Notorious is a 1946 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a Nazi spy. She is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a group of Germans who have relocated to Brazil after World War II. Claude Rains is Alex Sebastian, one of her father's friends and a member of the group.
During her training, she falls in love with Devlin; his feelings for her are tempered by his knowledge of her past. When Devlin is ordered to convince her to marry Sebastian to find out what he's plotting, he agonizes before choosing duty over love. Bitter at the betrayal by the one she loves, Alicia does wed Sebastian. She accidentally stumbles upon the plot, but in the process leaves a clue that Sebastian traces back to her. Now Sebastian has a problem. He must silence Alicia, but can't expose her without falling under suspicion with his fellow Nazis. His solution is to begin poisoning her gradually. Devlin finds out and rescues her publicly, leaving Sebastian to the non-existent mercy of his "friends".
The picture fell under scrutiny at the time of its release for a long embrace between Bergman and Grant. Censorship of the period limited the amount of time a couple on screen could kiss, and Hitchcock circumvented this restriction by having his lovers maintain close physical contact while moving across the room making dinner plans. Such extended close-ups of lovers became a Hitchcock trademark. Similar examples occur in Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest.
Critics have noted a "beverage motif" that runs throughout the picture: at the beginning of the film, Alicia is portrayed as a dipsomaniac and bottles and glasses are prominent in many scenes; later, Alicia and Devlin discover the uranium (the film's MacGuffin) in wine bottles in Sebastian's cellar; finally, Sebastian and his mother attempt to kill Alicia by poisoning her coffee.
Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht chose to use uranium as their central plot device before the use of atomic weapons against Japan. Hitchcock later alleged that he was under FBI surveillance because of this.
Awards and nominations
External links
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