Notorious (1946) on Netflix
NR19461h 43mCrimeDramaMysteryRomanceThriller
Government agent T. R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, a convicted German spy's daughter, to spy on German émigrés in Rio de Janeiro. Her task: charm Alexander Sebastian, her father's friend.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.9/10113,581 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Alicia Huberman, whose father was convicted of spying for Germany, is asked by the government agent T. R. Devlin to help infiltrate a circle of German émigrés who settled in Brazil after the war. She refuses, until Devlin plays her recordings of her quarrels with her father that reveal where her loyalties lie. In Rio de Janeiro the two wait for the details of the assignment and fall in love. Devlin is then ordered to urge her to seduce Alex Sebastian, an IG Farben executive and a friend of her father, once in love with her. Devlin argues that the request asks too much of her and is overruled. At a riding club Sebastian recognizes her and pursues her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Notorious (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Notorious's signature two-and-a-half-minute kiss between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant was interrupted by Hitchcock every three seconds, a trick to slip the scene past the Production Code's three-second rule; Bergman said the nuzzling felt "very awkward" during filming.
- Producer David O. Selznick lobbied to replace Cary Grant with Joseph Cotten, partly because he owned Cotten's contract and Grant was unavailable for three months, but Hitchcock and RKO executive William Dozier invoked a clause in the sale contract and blocked him.
- At the 1979 American Film Institute dinner where Hitchcock received its Life Achievement Award, Ingrid Bergman presented him with the original wine-cellar key from Notorious, its most famous prop, which Cary Grant had kept after filming and later gave to her for luck.
- After several takes of her close-up in the dinner sequence, Ingrid Bergman told Hitchcock her character showed surprise too soon and did the scene her way; the set went silent, since Hitchcock normally did not welcome actors' ideas and had planned every shot in advance.
- Hitchcock claimed the FBI followed him for several months after he and screenwriter Ben Hecht discussed uranium with physicist Robert Millikan at the California Institute of Technology in mid-1945, when uranium's role in the atomic bomb was not yet common knowledge.
- David O. Selznick sold the Notorious package, script, Ingrid Bergman and Hitchcock, to RKO for $800,000 cash plus 50% of the profits; Hitchcock, though he received no money, became his own producer for the first time.
- Hitchcock wanted Clifton Webb for Alexander Sebastian, but David O. Selznick pressed hard for Claude Rains, arguing the role offered "an opportunity to build the gross of Notorious enormously"; Rains's performance made Sebastian a sympathetic, classic Hitchcock villain.
- Before RKO bought Notorious, producer David O. Selznick, miffed that no hit song came out of Spellbound, considered eighteen "gooey, sentimental songs", including "Love Nest" and "Don't Give Any More Beer to My Father", for the film; the sale removed him as decision-maker.
