Horror 2025 Countdown: Notorious (1946)

Notorious (1946), dir. Alfred Hitchcock, RKO Radio Pictures/Vanguard Films 

Moving into the director section, and as per tradition we open with a Hitchcock film. 

Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman)'s father was a Nazi. She is reminded of this when the mysterious T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) comes to her with a job; to wit there is a group of Nazis hiding in South America.

Her specific mission: Seduce ringleader Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains) and infiltrate the group. She does so, although her feelings towards Devlin start complicating things. 

Her mission goes off without a hitch. Sebastion falls hard for her and quickly marries her and to show her off he throws a party. One of the guests has a freakout at the sight of a certain bottle but everyone insists he's fine...he's just going for a drive. 

After the wedding, Alicia notices that her husband's keyring is missing a key to the wine cellar. She invites Devlin over and when her husband isn't looking snags the key. They search the cellar and in their haste break a bottle, which contains black sand. 

The search is soon discovered, but Sebastion has a problem. If he kills or exposes his wife, his buddies are sure to kill him for bringing an American spy into their midst. If he does nothing, he gets exposed anyway. 

His mother (Madame Konstantin), offers a novel suggestion-poison! The drugs are administered and Alicia confined to her bedroom. How can she get word to the outside?

Pretty darn good. There is a lot of back and forth between Grant and Bergman and the two play off each other wonderfully. Rains too is pitch perfect as the seemingly quiet little man. Almost playful banter between the leads, although there is a bit too much "you know, if you just sat down and explained you'd have shaved ten minutes off the plot there".