Notorious

Sort of a blend of a romance, an espionage story, and a noir, Notorious is pretty good and elevated to very good by the strength of its cast. Cary Grant is undeniably cool, but he also shows a lot of vulnerability here, as he can’t just charm away the problem he’s facing. In fact, he more or less lacks agency to do anything (except pout and be mean because he has a hard time showing his true feelings), which is something you don’t see in movies of the era. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia, a troubled woman tasked with infiltrating a cabal of Nazi refugees in Rio; Grant’s character Devlin has to watch as she has to ingratiate herself romantically, putting their love for each other out of reach. And Claude Raines is the Nazi she must romance to the fullest extent. There’s portions where it does get kind of slow, but the direction is always top shelf, the score is lush, and you can’t beat a movie led by those three. The only other major flaw is the ending, which is so abrupt, you’ll think the streaming got cut off or there was some kind of edit. It feels like a voiceover should tease next week’s episode, it’s so jarring. Give this movie a proper ending and it would get another half star, because it’s just that damned good watching actors of this caliber do their thing.