Notorious (1946)

After Alicia Huberman's father is sentenced to prison for being a Nazi spy, she meets government agent Devlin who tries to recruit her to spy on her fathers friends. At first she is reluctant as she has no experience, however she eventually agrees to the mission and sets off to Rio with Devlin, a romance blossoms. Alicia reunites with Alexander Sebastian, one of her fathers old friends who used to be in love with her and the leader of a pro-Nazi group. After a few meetings he proposes to Alicia and despite Devlin's displeasure, their boss says it would help her to get closer to him and so she accepts. From this point on it is a case of whether Alicia and Devlin can keep up the facade as they spy... Starring Carey Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, the film was released in 1946 and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was nominated for 2 Oscars. I found the film very boring and the plot difficult to relate to and follow, I don't think this is one of Hitchcock's best films and the only thing I can think of which I enjoyed was the suspenseful scene where Alicia and Devlin discover the contents of Alexanders wine bottles in the cellar. The bottle smashing and the score really add to the tension but other than this I did not enjoy it. It was slow to get started and was overall definitely not as dramatic as some of his other films. I would only recommend this film to someone who was very interested in the shooting of films or old fashioned cinematography as there is one scene in particular which is quite interesting where there is a zoom from a high shot to an extreme close up.