Cary's Introduction in Notorious

I’m fascinated by Cary Grant’s introduction in Notorious, which delays our view of his face far longer than we expect in such a romantic star vehicle.

Like Psycho, the film opens on a particular date and time. An April afternoon in Miami in 1946. The very specific implies a very universal. America is at war but this time and place are in domestic, balmy America. 

The first shot is a closeup of a reporter’s flash camera, panning along a line of reporters to one peering in on a courtroom. The journalists make the film about the reporting of the war, the civilian response to it, more than the war itself. There’s also a self-referentiality to Hitchcock’s camera starting on a newsman’s. So, too, his cameo, walking away from a bar with a drink — a replay of the playgirl Alicia’s (Ingrid Bergman) reform and her lover’s dangerous skepticism about it.

Inside the courtroom, a German American is sentenced to 20 years for treason. As his daughter Alicia cuts through those reporters’ intrusive questions she’s beautiful, firm, inexpressive. 

But she cuts loose in the next scene, cavorting at a party. She seems untouched by her father’s verdict. Exhilarated, she is sensual in her bare arms, her blouse a rebuttal to prisoner stripes. In her drunken hilarity the Nazi’s daughter seems to be the film’s central protagonist and mystery. The titular notorious?

But the party scene is commanded by the central rear view of a still, dark haired man. He clearly catches the heroine’s eye, as he denies ours. Alicia flirts with him, offers him a drink, but he is implacable. Of course, he turns out to be Cary Grant. Hitchcock introduced his male lead from behind, anonymous, the still center of the party, of the heroine’s flippant attention and of our questioning engagement. 

And of the film. This character, invitingly named Devlin, becomes its central mystery. He proves to be the true “notorious” for his precarious hovering between the devoted and the devilish. This romantic/political drama is an anatomy of Devlin, not Alicia. Having initially seemed the titular “notorious” of the party life, she is cleared by a conversation recording of any suspicion that she might share her father’s Nazi party life. 

The film exposes Devlin’s questionable pragmatism. He embodies the notorious inhumanity that can shadow even the right side in the eternal battle between good and evil. The good guys can do bad things. Especially when they can claim they have to. 

This Devlin is in the details. His apparent stability proves deceptive. His image does a 360-degree spin from Alicia’s perspective on her hungover morning after. We continue to get rear-view headshots of him, leaving his character and mood in question.

The lovers in various settings are set in a hard-edged clear foreground against soft-focus social backdrops. They are clear in a foggy world. When she is drugged by her Nazi husband Sebastian, Alicia turns foggy, provoking Devlin’s doubts of her reform and character.

The continuing rear-head shots of Devlin leave him enigmatic and ambivalent. To wrest control of the steering wheel he knocks her out with a punch we don’t see but disturbingly hear. As their love affair proceeds she is the aggressor, open, expressive. He receives her ardor coolly, impassive. His cold mien confirms the rear-head concealing of his emotion.  Indeed, the film's famous 360-degree camera spin around the lovers' passionate kiss is the antithetic rebuttal to the first flat shot of his back.

Devlin’s first suggestion of love for Alicia is his silence when his secret service bosses reveal their plan. Alicia is to seduce Sebastian, the Nazi collaborator who already loves her, win his trust and intimacy, then report on him. 

Disdainful of their human weapon, the American government is prostituting Alicia and expecting Devlin to arrange it. Devlin appears as inexpressive with the schemers as he was with her — though he does firmly bristle at one derogation of her character. He then coldly engages her in the ambivalent scheme. Because she loves him she will submit to — even marry —the Nazi she spurned

At heart this is the classic Love vs Duty story. Hitchcock’s twist is that both his heroes dramatically put their duty ahead of their love. Antony and Cleopatra would never do that. Our lovers’ choice neaBon Voyage and Adventure Malgache.rly proves fatal. What saves the day — both for Alicia and for the allies — is Devlin reversing the cliche. He puts his love for Alicia ahead of his duty to the program. Not only does he save Alicia but he gets her dirt on the Nazis’ Macguffin source.  

        Hitchcock was long concerned with the intrusion of world politics into personal or domestic relationships, from his 1930s thrillers --  TMWKTM, 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, Lady Vanishes -- into his wartime Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, Lifeboat, and the centrally focused Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache. The theme dominated his Torn Curtain and Topaz.

As Hitchcock prefers the human over the political, Devlin’s devotion provides the happy ending for everyone — except Sebastian. As the drama opened on the back of Devlin’s head — the enigmatic positive — it closes on the back of the pathetic Sebastian’s. Devlin has whipped Sebastian’s wife off to her life-saving hospital, leaving him to face his mortally suspicious comrades. Sebastian mounts the stairs to the cabal’s plot. As with Devlin earlier, we can’t see Sebastian’s face but we can infer his feelings. To his notorious comradesl he is now the notorious traitor, his face lost to us as his trust is to them.