Six Week Film School Features Bergman and Grant in Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS

Tonight is Week 2 of Bill McBride's Six Week Film School at the Normal Theater. Professor McBride hosted a Film Noir series last fall, but this time he's focusing on Alfred Hitchcock. It doesn't get any better for film students than Hitchcock, the master of suspense who was also a master of "the stylized language of cinema." You'll find Hitchcock movies on almost every film school syllabus because he employed so many different cinematic techniques to create suspense and keep his audience connected as well as recoiling. 

I'm sorry I'm a week late to talk about Shadow of a Doubt, the creepy "Merry Widow Murderer" movie that centers on a family in a small town and how young Charlie (played by Teresa Wright) unravels the mystery of her charming Uncle Charlie (the reason she got her name) and just why he's come to visit after so long. Joseph Cotten, a warm, appealing actor, creates a portrait of Uncle Charles that's all the more creepy because he seems like such a regular guy. Hitchcock casts evil into the midst of an apple-pie sort of town, with a Little Charlie/Big Charlie duality that makes all of us feel guilty.

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman steam up the screen in Notorious.

Notorious, this week's Hitchcock, is one of his best, too, with another sympathetic villain in Claude Rains' Alexander Sebastian, who happens to be a rich Nazi hanging out in South America in 1946. The minute I said "Nazi" I'm sure you jumped back with "Sympathetic? A Nazi?" but it's Sebastian's love for Alicia Huberman, the "notorious" woman in the title, played by Ingrid Bergman at her most luminous, that makes him sympathetic even as it proves his undoing. Alicia is the daughter of another Nazi, one who's been uncovered and prosecuted in Florida before the movie starts. Dark and devilish spy Cary Grant (it's no coincidence his character's name is Devlin) puts Miss Huberman between a rock and a hard place (sexual innuendo intended) when he forces her to get close to Alexander Sebastian to infiltrate the gang of bad guys.

The sexual politics in the film are definitely dicey -- let's just say in today's world it could've been called "Slut Shaming" just as easily as "Notorious" -- and Devlin is a rat if ever there was one. Because of her father's crimes and her own reputation as a party girl, Alicia is a pawn in a game created by a whole lot of controlling, judgmental, cruel men. It doesn't matter to Devlin if he punches her or pimps her out or almost kills her. He's handsome. He's cynical. His important big-guy spy stuff is much more important than any woman. And, in fact, the notion that all the punishment Alicia gets may just be what she deserves to clean away the "spots" of her sexuality is definitely present.

Hitchcock was often creepy about his female characters and the way he treats Alicia Huberman is no exception, even as she does show a certain agency as a sleuth and we are given some focus on her point of view. Bergman's big-screen persona and charisma function to give her character both sensuality and virtue, to make her seem like a real, three-dimensional human being, no mere victim or paper doll to be cut to size. We know she's good and honorable, no matter how notorious she is or how many smutty comments a roomful of American agents toss her way. In the end, the fact that she has been known to drink to excess and have sex, including with Devlin and Sebastian, makes her more sympathetic and attractive, not less.

It doesn't hurt that Cary Grant has his own big-screen persona and charisma working on all cylinders and the sparks Bergman and Grant create together make Notorious work really, really well.

The famous sweeping shot to a key in Bergman's hand, a huge coffee cup, smoke and mirrors, the use of light and shadow, off-kilter angles, flipping point-of-view, a staircase of doom, the MacGuffin in a wine cellar... And the sexual politics. All fodder for a ripping good discussion of Hitchcock as a cinematic artist.

Notorious will be screened tonight at 7 pm at the Normal Theater. The movies included in the Six Week Film School are offered free of charge, and the program includes a post-show discussion with Professor McBride. Click here for McBride's notes on the film, including links to some excellent reading material.

Next week: Strangers on a Train. After that, McBride's schedule includes Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds.

Another Don't Miss -- NOTORIOUS -- on TCM at Midnight

The programmers at Turner Classic Movies have certainly had my number this month, what with all the film noir and a focus on screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart, who specialized in romantic comedy.

Last week, they aired Holiday, the Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn comedy that sits at the top of my all-time favorite list. And now, tonight, we get Notorious, not the B.I.G.one, but a 1946 suspense classic directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ingrid Bergman as a bad girl, one Alicia Huberman, and Cary Grant as the dark and dangerous spy who's keeping an eye on her. He's keeping a few other things on her, too, and it's that combination of seduction, betrayal and danger that makes Notorious so delicious.

Cary Grant may have created the perfect screen hero using elegance and charm, intelligence and mischief, to make an indelible mark on film. Notorious shows off his dark side. And that is a very good side for Mr. Grant.

Even aside from Grant's drop-dead gorgeous, drop-dead sardonic spy, there's a lot to love about Notorious. Ingrid Bergman is a wonderful partner for him. He's all sharp edges, while she's all soft doubt and sensuality. You believe in the attraction as well as the doubts. Hitchcock makes sure of that.

The plot sets her up as the daughter of a Nazi convicted of treason to the United States in a very public trial. So she's the notorious one, since everyone suspects her of aiding and abetting Dad. Plus she's been known to drink and party too much, making her reputation even worse. Enter Cary Grant as Devlin, the cynical spy who woos her long enough to get her to go after one of Dad's former compatriots, now living the good life in Brazil.

That compatriot is Alexander Sebastian, a small, seemingly sweet man who has a battle-ax of a mother and some very nasty friends. The elegant and urbane Claude Rains turns Sebastian into one of Hitchcock's best villains, someone who is warm and sympathetic, clearly smitten with Bergman's Alicia, even as he plots with Nazis on the side.

The romantic complication for Devlin and Alicia is that it's his job to get her to seduce Sebastian, and to clear her name from her father's evil deeds, she has to do it, even though the two are really in love with each other. That is a pretty dandy conflict as conflicts go.

So Alicia goes through with it, playing on Sebastian's major crush to get herself into his life and his household. And then the games really begin, building to a swanky party where she has to steal a key to the champagne cellar, trade the key to Dev right under Sebastian's nose, get into the wine cellar to find the hidden uranium (I'm not making this up!) and get back to the party before anyone is the wiser. Uranium! Poison! Champagne! Jealousy! Jeopardy!

It's really, really good stuff.

I cannot recommend Notorious highly enough. It's just that good. And it begins tonight at midnight (Central time) on Turner Classic Movies.

It's Claude Rains Day on TCM!

Turner Classic Movies has chosen today to celebrate the wonderful character actor Claude Rains, airing 13 of his movies, from 1933's "The Invisible Man" at 7 pm Central to 1963's "Twilight of Honor" at 3:15 am.

Most of these are not Claude Rains-centric movies, but star vehicles for somebody else, like "Now, Voyager," one of my mother's favorite movies, that shows up at 3:45 pm this afternoon. That one puts Bette Davis in the spotlight, playing an introverted, lonely woman who takes a cruise as part of an attempt to live a more full life, and there falls in love with a married man, played by the dashing Paul Henreid. He holds two cigarettes in his mouth, lights them both and hands her one of them in a swoony, indelible romantic gesture, and even though they both know their love affair is impossible, she says, "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars," in a swoony, indelible romantic line. Rains plays the therapist who encourages her to turn her life around, to go from a frump under her mother's thumb to a stylish, elegant beauty who takes the fateful cruise. It's definitely Bette's movie. She and Gladys Cooper, as her domineering mother, were nominated for Oscars. Rains was not.

"The Invisible Man," the marquee movie at 7, is clearly a Rains piece, however. The trick is that he's invisible for most of the film. Still, that cultured, rich Rains voice is front and center, and he does a terrific job communicating the character of the brilliant scientist who invents an invisibility potion, succeeds in making himself invisible, but also succeeds in driving himself insane. "Invisible Man" was Claude Rains' first Hollywood film after a distinguished stage career (and one silent film) in England. He'd also been a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

"The Invisible Man" made Claude Rains a star, but a star as a character actor rather than a leading man, one who made his biggest impact in supporting roles. If I were running Claude Rains Day at TCM, I would've tried to include "Casablanca," where Rains is as adorable as he is unforgettable as Captain Renault, the one who begins a "beautiful friendship" with Humphrey Bogart's Rick, and Alfred Hitchcock's fabulous "Notorious," where Rains is part of a group of Nazi expats living in Rio de Janeiro. His Alexander Sebastian loses his heart to Ingrid Bergman, who is romancing him to undermine him and his fellow Nazis, with help from her real love, Cary Grant. Hitchcock was known for his three-dimensional, appealing villains, and Alexander Sebastian was one of his best. You can't help but feel pangs of sympathy for this small, sweet man who pins his romantic hopes on lovely, luminous, larger Ingrid Bergman. Rains' performances shows the glimmer of hope in his eyes, the fear that she isn't for real, and the dawning awareness that he has really screwed up. Rains makes you care for Sebastian, even though he's a Nazi. That's no mean feat.

"Notorious" is a wonderful movie in a lot of other ways, too, with Cary Grant being all gorgeous and sexy (as well as nasty and dark), Bergman beautiful and vulnerable, and Hitchcock using lighting, camera angles and creepy supporting actors to ratchet up the suspense (both the romantic and spy-story variety) as the film moves along.

Rains was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscars for both "Casablanca" and my beloved "Notorious," as well as "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," where he played the corrupt Senator Paine, and "Mr. Skeffington," another TCM choice, where he was paired with Bette Davis again. In that one, he was Bette's Jewish husband, someone she married for reasons other than love. It may be called "Mr. Skeffington," but Mrs. Skeffington, a spoiled, fickle beauty who wreaks havoc on the lives around her, is the star all the way through. But Claude Rains does his usual excellent work, making you feel for the little guy who never gets the girl, but shows intelligence, compassion and charisma just the same.

"Mr. Skeffington" airs at 8:30 pm (Central Time Zone) tonight on TCM, right after "The Invisible Man."