-from “Song: to Celia,” by Ben Jonson

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Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is not only one of my favorite films, but I can say without hyperbole that it is one of the most perfect films ever created.

Everything in this film, from script to casting, from costumes to editing, is so ruthlessly efficient and effective. Many films are satisfying on first viewing, and many are rewarding after careful and repeated viewings, but few films can make such a thorough claim to be both. I cannot recall when I first saw the film, but I do remember that my initial impression was being captivated by the suspense of the political intrigue and espionage that drive the plot. Upon recently viewing it again, I was surprised to notice just how paper thin that spy plot really is. In fact, the famous “MacGuffin” of this story, the uncovering of a Nazi plot to use Uranium for some unspecified purpose, is truly incidental to the focus of the film. The real story is a love triangle between a spy master (Cary Grant), his spy recruit, a “notorious” daughter of a Nazi criminal (Ingrid Bergman), and her father’s former associate (Claude Rains). I was amused by the following recollection of Hitchcock, found in the famous interview book with François Truffaut, in which he defends the flimsy MacGuffin (the Nazi Uranium) against the criticism from the associate of a producer who had passed on making the film:

If you wish, you can find a synopsis of the plot online, along with the nearly unanimous critical praise for the film. In this post, I won’t be concerned about spoilers; this film is almost 70 years old, and therefore past any statute of limitations. Besides, it’s “not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it,” as Roger Ebert said.

And how this movie is about its business is so incredible that it is difficult to put into words. That is because, more than any other film I know of, this movie has such a tight and interconnected symbolism that perfectly ties together the various plot threads in a VISUAL way. The dialogue in the script is perfect in this film, but partly because of how minimal it is. There isn’t a spare word in the film, and never a line of dialogue when a visual gesture would tell the story. I think that Truffaut was correct in calling this film the “very quintessence of Hitchcock” which achieved “at once a maximum of stylization and a maximum of simplicity.”

In his Poetics of Music, Igor Stravinsky describes the strength found in a unity of artistic conception based on limiting the variety of musical materials. This strength is exemplified by Hitchcock’s visual economy in Notorious:

Hitchcock’s medium, the cinema, is of course a dramatic one, involving the depiction of a story, and it engages the auditory sense through music and dialogue, but it is clear from his interviews that he considered it primarily a visual medium. He said that he himself had a “purely visual mind,” and was most interested in how he could use visual means to connect with the emotions and mind of the audience. In Notorious, even the musical soundtrack is relatively unmemorable compared to the many classic Bernard Hermann scores that would follow. This is not to say that it is poor or ineffective. Rather it is functional in a manner that serves the feel of the scenes without drawing any attention to itself or away from the viewer’s visual experience.

Hitchcock achieves the unity of design Stravinsky describes in this film by tying together all the strands with the singular visual motif of the drink. The drink serves as both plot device and metaphor, morphing its meaning according to the context of each scene. Through the use of such a compact and rich symbol, he is able to bring the viewer through a love story disguised as a spy story, taking them through the emotional twists of the story relying almost exclusively on a single motivic idea as a visual connector. I will present all the most notable examples from the film with a brief comment below.

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After the brief opening trial scene, we move quickly to the introduction of our lovers, with Alicia offering Devlin a drink at a party at her home.

The morning after the party, Alicia is given a hangover remedy by Devlin. The drink here is the indicating the care that Devlin will take for her well being, both as her spy handler and as her would-be lover. This scene is also a parallel to a key scene late in the film when Alicia is rescued by Devlin.

The romance between Devlin and Alicia first blossoms in this flirtatious scene over drinks in a Rio café.

Devlin fetches a bottle of champagne to enjoy a dinner date with Alicia. On the way back to the apartment however, he stops by to receive orders which will ultimately drive Alicia into the arms of the Nazi criminal played by Claude Rains. The scene begins by panning up from this bottle to the conflicted Devlin.

The scene ends by panning down to a shot of the abandoned bottle, a visual symbol foreshadowing that Devlin and Alicia’s romance will remain unconsummated.

After the remarkable conversation in which Devlin delivers her instructions, and she accepts, Alicia moves into the room and pours herself what appears to be a stiff drink. She is at once fortifying her nerve for the assignment ahead, and marking a possible return to the abuse of drink that she displayed earlier in the film. I note in passing that this is the only shot in the film where Hitchcock shoots through an obstruction like this curtained window. Through a visual separation from the camera, he marks the separation that has just taken place between the characters.

In this scene, Alicia has caught the Nazi, Alex Sebastian, in her trap of seduction. Of course this scene is a mirror of the earlier scene in the café, with Devlin now replaced by Sebastian.

The visual unity of theme continues in the dinner party scene, where Alicia is introduced to the cast of villains. Here one of the Nazi conspirators betrays himself by pointing to the wine bottle, afraid that one of the ones being used to hide uranium samples has been set out to be served by mistake.

Unfortunately, it was Emil who was mistaken, and his clumsy blunder will cost him his life. His fellow conspirators will deliberate and decide his fate, of course over after-dinner drinks.

Even Hitchcock’s signature cameo involves a drink! As Alicia and Devlin enter the room at the party in the central sequence in the film, the Master of Suspense is seen downing a glass of champagne.

Here is yet another clever use of drinks…suspense is built by a series of four shots during the party sequence depicting the diminishing supply of champagne. When the bottles run out, Sebastian and his servant will come down to the wine cellar and discover Devlin and Alicia poking around in the forbidden room where the criminals have hidden their disguised uranium samples in wine bottles.

In a rapid series of edits, which illustrates Hitchcock’s brilliance in visual storytelling, the uranium is discovered when Devlin knocks a bottle to the floor, shattering it and spilling the contents. This sequence is incredibly dull on paper (Devlin explores a wine cellar and knocks over a bottle of wine, discovering the contents) but is in fact the most suspenseful scene in the film. In a film renowned for some brilliant long takes, this sequence is edited with a brisk pace and cuts between the action in the cellar and the “champagne countdown” upstairs to create maximum tension, again while staying with the single unifying symbol of the drink.

Alicia’s betrayal is discovered when Sebastian examines the wine cellar the next morning. A false bottle has been put in place of the broken one, and the false wife has been discovered.

In the poisoning montage that follows Sebastian’s discovery and revelation to his wicked mother, several ominous shots of Alicia’s coffee cup are included. It is unclear to Devlin at first that she is becoming weak and ill from poison; he assumes that she has returned to the liquor bottle to cope with the strain of her situation, tying the climax of the plot very closely to the exposition through the visual symbol of drinking.

Again, Hitchcock’s economy of storytelling is linked to his economy of visual symbolism. In other films, the passage of time is indicated with such bald images as the hands of a clock moving, or pages flying off of a calendar. Here, simply cutting between a shot of a full cup, to a shot of a pacing and nervous Devlin waiting in vain for his meeting with Alicia, to a shot of a nearly empty cup, at once deftly indicates the passage of time while simultaneously heightening the tension for the audience, who know she is being poisoned.

Once again, a character’s key moment of discovery happens when a drink is being shared. Through the carelessness of the guest nearly grabbing the wrong cup, Alicia realizes that she is being poisoned.

The final shot involving drinking in the film. This serves to illustrate the casual and even callous way that Alicia has been handled by her spy masters. While Alicia lies on her deathbed, watched over by her evil Mother-in-law, Prescott lounges on the bed enjoying a snack and a drink in relaxed comfort, unconcerned with Alicia’s personal fate.