NOTORIOUS

"Notorious" is one of Hitchcock's greatest films, (it may be his best of the forties); sexy, suspenseful and perhaps the most perfectly cast. The hero is Cary Grant, the heroine Ingrid Bergman but neither of them is spotless; he's something of a heel and she's something of a tramp. The villain is Claude Rains who is actually more sympathetic than the good guys were it not for the fact that he's a Nazi and has a particularly nasty mother who looks like she might eat little boys for breakfast. She's played by the great Madame (Leopoldine) Konstantin. They are all superb, of course. Ben Hecht did the script and it's brilliant. The McGuffin is uranium hidden in wine bottles in Rains' cellar and which would be used to build Atomic Bombs unless Grant and Bergman can put a stop to it but in order to do that Bergman must first marry Claude and move into his nest of Nazi spies. The setting is Rio and the set pieces are great and plentiful. Like all of the best Hitchcocks you can view this again and again and never get tired of it.