Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Bogdanovich Challenge: Week Eight



THE FILM: 

Notorious, released August 15, 1946.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. 


PETER BOGDANOVICH SAYS:

"For an absolutely unique, no-apologies. no-excuses, first-rate picture, Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 suspense success, NOTORIOUS, is the one. It is a more-modern-than-ever. ambiguous and troubling, love-versus-duty story of the early noir era: a convicted Nazi's innocent daughter (Ingrid Bergman at her most striking), wholly in love with an American spy (Cary Grant) who's divded about her, is forced to marry a renegade Nazi (Claude Rains) who's truly mad about her."
"It is arguably Hitchcock's best film, with a brilliant script (nominated for an Academy Award) that he concocted with the ace Ben Hecht."

THE TRASH MAN SAYS:

Slow, sorta' dull.

I might have to mark these week's entry in the Challenge down as a failure. My familiarity with Hitchcock's work bends more to his later-era work; the darker (Rear Window, Strangers on a Train) and the far more depraved (Psycho, Frenzy). Oh, and The Birds (1963), of course. This one, well, this one I would argue with Bogdanovich is far from the best from The Master of Suspense.

I'm going to have to revisit it sooner rather than later, though. To give it a fair chance to redeem itself in the eyes of a sluggish Trash Man. Yeah, I had difficulty staying awake thanks to an early morning shift at work, which is maybe no fault of the film's. But with only a few hours left in the day, and the week-long window to watch and review the film, I don't have it in me to attempt a re-watch before the deadline's up.

Sorry, Hitch. I'll see you again in Week Fifteen, and hopefully then I'll be a lot less groggy.

1 comment:

  1. Roger Ebert also put this one on his Greatest Movies of All Time list. I was surprised that not many of his more famous movies from the '50s like North by Northwest, Rear Window or Psycho made the cut.

    I liked the beginning and the end, the slow reveal of Cary Grant and the climatic walk down the stairs has a good deal of punch behind it, but it is one of Hitchcock's slower offerings.

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