Notorious (1946)

“There's nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh.”

            Today is Ingrid Bergman’s 100^th birthday. Bergman is one of my all time favorite classic film actresses. Without her I would not be as into classic films and Hollywood as I am now. I remember picking up a few of her films when I worked at Best Buy many moons ago. It was at a time when classic films were starting to come out on DVD. The first of her films I bought were Spellbound, Casablanca, and Notorious. I bought Notorious because I love Cary Grant and so did my great-grandmother who told me about the film. From the moment I first saw Bergman in Notorious I was hooked. In honor of Bergman’s 100^th birthday I have decided to review the first ever film I saw her in.

            A German man is convicted of being a Nazi spy in America. The press is abuzz outside the courtroom not so much for the German man but for his beautiful young daughter Alicia Huberman (Bergman). That night she has a wild party at her place and gets tossed. At the party is a man she has never seen before. Apparently a friend of hers brought the man along. The mysterious man’s name is Devlin (Grant) and he is the last one left among the guests at her party. In her drunken stupor Alicia wants to go for a drive and she will be the driver. On the road she gets pulled over but Devlin shows the officer a card and they are free to go. This angers Alicia because she realizes that Devlin is some kind of government worker sent to watch over her.

            The next morning Alicia wakes up severely hung over to see Devlin standing in her doorway. He has an assignment for her. She refuses to do so until Devlin plays her a record of a bugged conversation between her and her father where she professes her love for America. Alicia’s assignment is to get close to a man named Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) who was an associate of her father’s. Sebastian lives down in Rio De Janeiro where other ex-Nazis also live.

            Down in Rio, Devlin and Alicia fall in love. They share a passionate kiss on a hotel balcony and profess their love for one another. Before they can even have dinner Devlin receives news that Alicia is to get close to Sebastian. Devlin is not happy about this and begins to pull away from her as soon as he gets back to the hotel room. Devlin is told Sebastian will be out riding the following day and that is where Alicia is to catch his attention. Devlin moves their meeting along by kicking Alicia’s horse so Sebastian will ride after her.

            Soon Alicia is invited over Sebastian’s house where he lives with his domineering mother. Also invited to dinner that night are a few of Sebastian’s fellow Nazi sympathizers. While sitting down at the table one of the men nearly has a panic attack when he sees a bottle of wine on a sideboard. After dinner the men sit in the dining room  discussing what had happened before dinner. They decides that the man who saw the bottle must be gotten rid of because he has other slips in front of people before.

            Not long later Alicia announces to Devlin and his bosses that Sebastian has asked her to marry him. She did not answer him right away because she wanted to know what they thought she should do. The boss of the operation thinks Alicia should marry him and so she does. Devlin is still angry with her even though she was assigned to get close to Sebastian and she is angry and spiteful to him because he is the same way towards her. Sebastian and his mother throw a party for his friends to meet Alicia. She has told Devlin at one of their secret meetings that Sebastian is hiding something down in the wine cellar and he has key he keeps on his key ring. Before the party she takes the key off the ring so she and Devlin can find what he is hiding during the party. They do not have long before the champagne and wine run out and Sebastian will have to go down to the cellar. Devlin and Alicia find that Sebastian is hiding a chemical that looks like sand in the bottles. They get out of the cellar just in time but not before Sebastian catches them together. Devlin pulls Alicia close and kisses her and tells Sebastian the kiss was his fault. That night Sebastian comes to the realization from finding his key all the sudden back on his ring and the chemical on the floor that his wife is an American spy.

            Sebastian tells his mother about Alicia. Being the sweet caring mother she is tells her son that something must be done about her and she decides to have Alicia slowly poisoned. The mother’s plan works and soon Alicia is too ill to leave the house to see Devlin. Devlin and his boss become worried about her. He tries to go see her but he is told that Alicia is not to be disturbed. Devlin finally has enough and goes to the house, heads up to Alicia’s room and takes her away. As he is leaving with Alicia, Sebastian comes out of another room where he was meeting with his associates. Devlin know Sebastian cannot do anything. Some of the men come out from the other room and see what is happening. They realize that Sebastian has known that his wife is a spy and has not done anything about it sooner. Devlin is able to get away with Alicia without incident and Sebastian’s fate is left to the men in his house.

            Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant are complete perfection together. Both of them were so outrageously talented as actors that worked so well together. Their onscreen chemistry just oozes out of the film. The scene where they kiss on the balcony is incredible because of their chemistry and because of the fact that the Production Code only allowed for a couple to kiss for three seconds at a time so Alfred Hitchcock had Bergman and Grant kiss then pull away while still in each other’s arms and then kiss again multiple times. That kiss is my all time favorite onscreen kiss. Grant is the epitome of classic Hollywood leading man. He was always so handsome but I do not think he ever was more so than in Notorious. Ian Flemming based the look of his character James Bond off of Cary Grant and you can see why so clearly in this film (although Flemming said he based Bond off of Grant’s character in North By Northwest). Ingrid Bergman was beautiful in every film she made. She was a woman who never needed the flash of costumes or jewelry to help make her beautiful she just naturally was. Her acting in Notorious is fantastic especially at the beginning where she is this bitter drunken woman and also later on when she is spiteful and angry with Devlin. I believe in the hands of a lesser actress Alicia Huberman would not have been convincing or worked as well as she did.

            Alfred Hitchcock is one of my all time favorite directors because he knew who he wanted for his films and how he wanted his films to look and feel. The man had a knack for picking out the best talent for his films. Besides the kiss scene my other favorite scene is the push up from the upstairs of Sebastian’s home during the party to the key in Alicia’s hand in the foyer. There have been several scenes where it goes from wide angle to a detail within the frame but what makes this scene more interesting and awesome is that there were no camera cranes in 1946 when this film was made. A scaffold-like structure had to be made where the camera could be lowered and as the camera was lowered the lens zoomed out into Bergman’s hand.

            Notorious is one of my all time favorite films as a whole and for the actors and directors. The more I watch it the more I fall in love with it and with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I do not think I could imagine a better film to become a fan of Ingrid Bergman’s she was amazing. If you have yet to see Notorious see it as soon as you can and any way you can.

 

They Won't Forget (1937)

They Won’t Forget is a film with a story that unfortunately is still relevant today. Fortunately though, society is not as primitive as it was back in the 1930s, I say “not as primitive” because let’s face it with certain things we still are. We are supposed to be more understanding and willing to see the truth and sometimes more than not we do not want to see the truth we are blind to it. We get one idea in our head and it is hard to get it out.

            Robert Hale is a teacher for a secretarial school for girls in a small southern town. Robert is from the north and not too many people trust him. The head of the school comes in to let his class go because it is memorial day for the Confederate dead. The students laugh at him after he gets reamed out by the head of the school. One of the students Mary Clay (Lana Turner) gets upset at her classmates for laughing at him because she likes him.

            After they are let out Mary and her friend go to a drug store and get milkshakes. Mary realizes she forgot her vanity case in the class room and goes back to get it. She passes a professor outside the building and the janitor hears her walk up the stairs. That night Mary’s date cannot find her so he goes to the school where her friend said she had gone.

            At the school the janitor comes out along with Robert when he left for the day. The janitor goes back into the building. Robert goes home and tells his wife he went to the barber when she mentions he smells like perfume. He also tells her that he stayed at the school to grade papers. Robert wants to go back home up north he feels there is a barrier between them and the people of the town. He wife convinces him to stay. When she goes to kiss him she sees a spot on his collar. He tells her the barber must have cut him.

            That night the janitor calls the police about a murder. He repeats hysterically over and over that he did not do it. The police find Mary’s body. Mary’s boyfriend tells the new sheriff Andy Griffin (Claude Rains) that Robert was in the school when he went to look for Mary. Her friend tells a reporter that Mary was crazy about Robert. Two detectives are sent to question Robert. One of them reads a note Robert had in his hand and another comes out with his stained suit. The detectives take Robert, the letter, and the suit downtown.

            The reporters practically invade Robert’s apartment. They tell his wife that her husband is being held in jail. The reporters publish that Robert was looking to go away. The whole town thinks he is guilty and that Andy should have prosecute him.

            Soon the entire nation is made aware of the case. The northern papers want to sell the prejudice angle. A famous New York detective comes down to do his own investigation into the murder. The investigator is eventually beaten up and run out of town. 

            The owner of the school where Mary was killed hires a lawyer for the janitor because he thinks the New York investigator will try to pin the murder on the janitor since he is a black man to get Robert out of jail. A powerful northern lawyer named Gleason (Otto Kruger) comes down to defend Robert. Robert is of course found guilty of the murder. The entire trial was unfair. Even the governor knows the trial was unfair and only gives Robert a life sentence instead of another trial.

            Mary’s brothers organize a mob to kill Robert. Andy felt terrible for having not been able to protect Robert from being killed. He sent a check to Robert’s widow. She comes to his office and tells him and the reporter there that they are the ones who had Robert killed. When Robert’s widow leaves Andy looks out the window and says to the reporter he wonders if Robert was really guilty.

            The cast was alright. This was Lana Turner’s first speaking role and she was completely adorable. A month before this she had been found in a drug store and her screen test had been for this film. Turner was the only good actor in this entire film. Alright, maybe except Otto Kruger but he was barely in the film. Claude Rains was laughable which is a total shame. He was ridiculous in the courtroom scene he was so awful. Rains over acted like hell.

            They Won’t Forget was really powerful. I like how it was ambiguous how we do not know if Robert was truly guilty or not. Prejudice was really strong and blinded the people of the small southern town where they could not look at evidence or see clearly to question if this northern man was truly guilty or innocent. Their blind hate and rage for an outsider clouded their judgment. That kind of injustice drives me insane. I think it drives me insane because I am thinking of the story with a modern mind. We have all this technology and criminology and such that I think how all those things could have truly proven Robert’s guilt or innocence. They Won’t Forget was a bit boring after a while especially with the acting since it was so poor. Besides the acting the story is very powerful and suggest seeing the film once for it. You will be amazed how not too much has changed in America since that time. 

The White Tower (1950)

“To rest is not to conquer.”

            Never heard of The White Tower? No worries neither did I. The only reason I even recorded the film was because Glenn Ford is in it and TCM had a Glenn Ford marathon not that long ago.

            Carla Alton (Alida Valli) has come back to her home town after the War. She is determined to climb a mountain known as The White Tower. No guide is willing to take her up because her father was killed years ago trying to climb it. Martin Ordway (Ford) is one of the visitors at the same lodge Carla is staying at. He was a bomber during the War and had been shot down over the country and decided to come back to see it. Carla meets Martin and tells him how it was her father’s dream to climb the mountain all the way to the top. She is trying to put together a team to fulfill her father’s dream. She asks Martin but he tells her no.

            Carla eventually gets her team together. She gets an author named Paul DeLombe (Claude Rains) to go. Paul wants to go. He is frustrated that his wife does not understand his desire to live again he feels his writing is suffering. Carla also gets a German man named Heinz (Lloyd Bridges), a climbing student, to come along. Martin decides to go but only until the first time they camp not all the way to the top. Two other men from the village come on the climb as well.

            Martin is enjoying the climb and enjoying being with Carla that he decides to go to the second stop. On the second part of the way one of the other men slips and almost kills himself and Heinz. The man who slipped decides to go back and other man, Andreas, has to take him back down the mountain. Clara and Martin want to wait for Andreas but Paul and Heinz want to move on. All alone, Martin proposes to Clara. She tells him no.

            Clara and Martin catch up with Heinz and Paul. Heinz wants to leave Paul behind because he is slow and he keeps spacing out. Carla refuses to leave Paul because they are a team and they are to stay that way. Paul stays up drinking the entire night. He does not feel the need to continue on the next day. Andreas tells Paul to stay where he is until they climb back down. By himself Paul goes out of his mind. As he crawls out of the tent he knocks over an oil lamp and burns the tent down. In his drunken state he rips his manuscript and walks away from the tent into a bad storm.

            Heinz makes the decision to go up to the top by himself. Martin is fed up with Heinz and especially more so because he realized Heinz was a German pilot during the War. Martin makes it to the top by following Heinz’s fingerprints.

            Because I am such a lousy note taker I do not remember what happens after Martin and Heinz make it to the top and how Martin and Carla make it back down the mountain. All I remember is how horribly cheesy the ending was. Usually if I have written down very little of a film it means it was boring and I was not paying too much attention which is most likely what happened here.

            The cast was alright. Glenn Ford can never do any wrong. I enjoy him as an actor. Alida Valli was not a bad actress but I do not think she was right for this role at all. Claude Rains was horribly miscast. The part, to me, seems like it was meant for a lesser actor not someone like Rains. The character barely had any scenes or lines. All the actors looked like little kids in their climbing costumes. I was dying watching Lloyd Bridges climbing in shorts with boots and high socks. 

            I liked seeing all the actors in color. The color was not too poor like some classic films that are not very well known and are not restored properly. Sometimes the color took away from the film because it made the fake scenery very obvious.

            The White Tower, as I mentioned, is very boring, and very slow. There was nothing intense about seeing the characters in danger climbing the mountain because you knew who was going to come out safe and alive. I think the main issue of the film was the writers trying to add a romance in the middle of everything. It was so not necessary. The White Tower is not a film I would be in a rush to see even if you are a fan of Glenn Ford or Alida Valli or Claude Rains.