Hitchblogging on Notorious: "I'm not that kind of a girl?" I can't stand women who say things like that!

Previous installments of Hitchblogging here and here.

Turner Classic Movies had a Claude Rains marathon last night. Well, it was an Ingrid Bergman marathon, but I only caught Casablanca and Notorious and I prefer to think of it my way. I generally have nothing but love for Hitchcock/Truffaut, but in the case of Notorious Truffaut gets it wrong. From his summary of the plot:

. . . Alicia's assignment is to establish contact with Sebastian, a former friend of her father's, who harbors in his home a group of prominent Nazi refugees in Brazil. Alicia succeeds in establishing contact and becomes a regular visitor to Sebastian's home. He falls in love with her and proposes marriage. She hopes Devlin will object, but when he fails to do so, she accepts the offer.

I understand that Truffaut had to make concessions to brevity, but I worry that he has entirely sidestepped the film's big theme, which we can recognize as the film's big theme by the fact that it's the damn title.

The fundamental question is, "What kind of girl is Alicia?" The first half hour of the movie is Cary Grant keeping Ingrid Bergman at arm's length because he's not sure if she's mended her ways from the trampy lifestyle she'd been leading when he met her, and the tension of the next hour revolves around her inability to convince him she has, since her spy duties require her to sleep with Claude Rains. (Grant's best line: "Dry your eyes, baby. It's out of character.") Grant abuses Bergman for being loose, and Bergman, because she knows that at some level he's right, doesn't fight back. Her decision to put up with his slights ("You don't think a woman can change?" "Sure, change is fun. For a while.") is the most interesting part of the movie; women really are like that, and it's hard to pin down why. The math of Bergman's decision to Mata Hari it up is obvious, but something about chastity doesn't fit with ordinary moral math. The fact that it's for the greater good doesn't seem to matter to Grant (obviously) or her (much less obviously). I would hate to think that Truffaut omitted the dilemma of Bergman's virtue because he thought such things were outdated. If the movie suggests anything, it's that purity is a human idea and not simply a cultural one.

Last note on Notorious:

Alicia: This is a very strange love affair.
Devlin: Why?
Alicia: Maybe the fact that you don't love me.
Devlin: When I don't love you, I'll let you know.
Alicia: You haven't said anything.
Devlin (kissing her): Actions speak louder than words.

Actions speak louder than words: if she loves him, why can't she act like it? The movie's climax proves that the real question was always "If he loves her, why can't he say it?" Performative language speaks loudest of all?

*Yeah, the post's title is actually from Paris When It Sizzles.