In this compelling behind-the-scenes documentary, Notorious ~ Xtras: The Ultimate Romance explores the passionate, suspenseful, and intricately crafted world of Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 masterpiece Notorious. Combining archival footage, expert interviews, and rare production insights, this featurette dives into the film’s creation and the legendary on-screen chemistry between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.
Viewers are treated to intimate stories about Hitchcock's directorial brilliance, the emotional complexity of the characters, and how the political tensions of the post-WWII era shaped the narrative. The making-of documentary reveals how Notorious became a landmark in cinematic storytelling and romantic tension, bridging espionage, love, and betrayal with breathtaking elegance.
Viewers are treated to intimate stories about Hitchcock's directorial brilliance, the emotional complexity of the characters, and how the political tensions of the post-WWII era shaped the narrative. The making-of documentary reveals how Notorious became a landmark in cinematic storytelling and romantic tension, bridging espionage, love, and betrayal with breathtaking elegance.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Notorious
00:09Notorious, I think, is one of Hitchcock's best films.
00:12I think it's right up there among The Rear Window and North by Northwest.
00:16It's one of the great Hitchcock films.
00:18It's a very subtle, dark movie. It's a dark love story, really.
00:22Hitchcock is known as a master of suspense.
00:26But Hitchcock also is the master of romance.
00:34In Notorious, there's some of the most romantic scenes that Hitchcock ever shot
00:40and some of the most sexually compelling moments I've ever seen in film.
00:45I think if you look at most Hitchcock movies, there is an underlying sexual theme going on,
00:51especially in Notorious.
00:53Just a minor item, but you may want it for the record.
00:57What is it?
00:58You can add Sebastian's name to my list of playmates.
01:04David Selznick heard about this story called The Song of the Dragon.
01:08It dealt with this woman who was asked to get involved with this man for the good of her country.
01:15That was kind of the seed.
01:18Selznick had bought The Song of the Dragon as a potential starring vehicle for Vivian Leigh.
01:24Later on, Ingrid Bergman, who had originally turned down the project,
01:29became interested once again when she learned that Selznick had identified this story as a potential directing project for Hitchcock.
01:37You've got to work on him and land him.
01:40Mata Hari. She makes love for the papers.
01:45Hitchcock was very interested in the Mata Hari story, the spy who used her feminine wiles to seduce the enemy and extract secrets.
01:56Hitchcock was often best when he collaborated. What terrific collaborators he had in Notorious.
02:03Ben Hecht was a journalist who became a playwright, who became a memoirist, who became a writer of various things, including screenplays.
02:17Ben Hecht was probably one of the best, if not the best, screenwriter in the 30s and 40s and one of the top screenwriters.
02:26And had a brilliant eye for construction and brilliant dialogue. He was really good.
02:32It's funny that nobody knows who Ben Hecht is. He was arguably the world's greatest screenwriter ever.
02:37First time Hitchcock worked with Ben Hecht was on Foreign Correspondent.
02:41He needed a patriotic, rousing speech that the journalist hero could deliver at the end, either from Paris or London,
02:50whichever got bombed first, rallying Americans to fight Hitler.
02:54And Hecht wrote that speech. He wrote two versions of it, and the one in London is used in the film.
03:00That was their first collaboration. After that, they worked on Spellbound together.
03:06Ben Hecht is a really fascinating character.
03:08His parents were Russian immigrants who had settled in New York, and he was born there on the Lower East Side in 1894.
03:14He always had ambitions to be a writer, but his first job out of high school was in a circus,
03:19where his uncle was a circus strongman.
03:21Though eventually he made his way into a newspaper office in Chicago.
03:24He was not above actually creating the news for publication.
03:28In fact, he fictionalized pirates on the Chicago River, looting boats and things like that.
03:35And he even conned a police officer into taking a picture as if he was making an arrest of pirates on the Chicago River at one time.
03:42He also turned his attention later to playwriting and teamed up with Charles MacArthur.
03:46The first play that they wrote together was called The Front Page, and it was a huge smash.
03:51And they followed that up with 20th Century, which was also a roaring success.
03:55Hollywood, of course, came calling to do adaptations of those plays, so Hecht and MacArthur went to Hollywood,
04:01where Ben Hecht became one of the most prolific screenwriters of the 1930s through the 40s and 50s.
04:07Hecht was great at providing dialogue for films.
04:11He had a great sense of humor. He had a great sense of drama.
04:15He seemed to understand what Hitchcock wanted.
04:18And Hitchcock knew exactly what Hecht could give him.
04:21And Hecht ended up giving him a very good backbone in the film Notorious for a Hitchcock film.
04:27He was the best. He was the best. That's why Notorious is the best.
04:31It was because of Hecht that Notorious ultimately became a political film.
04:39My department authorized me to engage you to do some work for us. It's a job in Brazil.
04:43Oh, go away. The whole thing bores me.
04:46Some of the German gentry who were paying your father are working in Rio.
04:50Ever hear of the IG Farben Industries?
04:52Ben Hecht was enraged, outraged, at what was going on in Europe.
04:57He hated the Nazis. And he definitely wanted to do something to correct the wrongs that had occurred.
05:08Prior to making Notorious, he had written a book called A Guide to the Bedeviled, which was all about anti-Semitism.
05:15He was a very staunch Zionist, so much so that he sort of called for acts of violence against the British occupiers of Palestine.
05:23Needless to say, the British are not very happy with this, and for a while his films were boycotted in the UK.
05:29Ben Hecht was someone who really understood the lengths to which a person must go to stand up to evil.
05:35And this is something that he was exploring in Notorious.
05:38As far as Hecht was concerned, and Hitchcock was in agreement with this, the Nazis were not a local problem in Germany.
05:44It was going to go away because we had won a military victory.
05:48He was extraordinarily bright. He had a world of experience. He was tough.
05:54He's innately perfect for a film such as Notorious.
05:58Change is fun. For a while.
06:01For a while. What a rat, Jordan.
06:05Selznick had major doubts about the story.
06:07The story that I think is most interesting about the evolution of Notorious is the contribution that Selznick made.
06:17He noted that once Ingrid Bergman goes into the lion's den, as it was called, once she marries Sebastian, that it becomes her picture.
06:26And it is. I think he was right in that assessment.
06:30But Selznick said, if this picture is going to work, we need to see him.
06:35In the original script, Bergman was the one who alone explored the wine cellar.
06:39Selznick stimulated Hitchcock to create a place for Devlin.
06:45And as it turns out, this becomes one of the most exciting sequences in the film.
06:50He becomes the director of the action.
06:52So it's a very exciting sequence that results from a shrewd observation that Selznick made.
06:59Selznick was involved at first, but he was more concerned about what was going on with Duel in the Sun.
07:04And that budget was just skyrocketing.
07:07Selznick was in trouble.
07:08He was in financial trouble with the studio.
07:10And he needed funds because of this Duel in the Sun that was costing so much money.
07:15And he needed a cash infusion now.
07:18So what he did after the script of Notorious was, for all intents and purposes, structured, if not completed,
07:28was to sell off part of the assets of the studio.
07:32And as Hitchcock once said, somewhat famously, Hollywood is the only town where the assets go home after work.
07:41And he was indeed one of the assets.
07:44So what Selznick did, rather like an agent might do, 30 or 40 years later, he bundled the script, the director, the two stars, and sent them over to RKO,
07:59where he made a fairly decent profit, but at some psychological expense, because he was already known in Hollywood as someone who retailed in talent, who traded in talent.
08:15And this was, in so many ways, beneath the dignity of the producer of Gone with the Wind and Rebecca, but he felt he had no choice.
08:24RKO is really one of the most interesting studios of all.
08:29RKO was gritty.
08:30RKO was noir.
08:32RKO was noir.
08:33It was really felicitous for Hitchcock and RKO to be married, because, you know, the tone, the feel, the look of Notorious is so good, and it's so right, and it's tough, and it's sexy.
08:47Let me put this on here. You might catch cold.
08:56RKO was noir.
08:57RKO was noir.
08:58RKO was noir.
08:59RKO was noir.
09:00RKO was noir.
09:01All of Hitchcock's American films feature big Hollywood stars, but Notorious, maybe, is the ultimate example of Hitchcock getting his dream cast.
09:10There aren't two better people to play those two characters.
09:15Do you want me to take the job?
09:18You're answering for yourself.
09:20I am asking you.
09:21Yes, other people could have played them.
09:24A different movie.
09:25Not sure that it would be a movie that we're talking about like this all these years later.
09:31He obviously had a special affection for Ingrid Bergman, uses her in at least three films, and obviously liked her personally.
09:40And as well, Cary Grant, I mean, every director in Hollywood wanted to work with Cary Grant. He was the ultimate leading man.
09:47Cary Grant was an extraordinary actor.
09:48Cary Grant was an extraordinary actor. He could look great. But, you know, there was all that strange combination of darkness and playfulness in Grant, which made him a fascinating figure on screen. He just was.
10:01Cary Grant had been under contract at Paramount Pictures, and he was very shrewd as to what project he wanted to work on.
10:08Grant didn't require that he always be the handsome leading man who was the good guy who always got the girl. And Hitchcock and Grant formed a very successful partnership.
10:18I think Grant probably responded to the mischievousness of Hitchcock.
10:22A key part of Hitchcock's work involves subverting our expectations. And Hitchcock absolutely loved to take incredibly handsome leading men who we go into the theater loving and show us maybe their darker side.
10:40Hitchcock was very perverse, and he loved to play with the audience's emotions about a leading man, and particularly if the leading man was a good-looking guy like Cary Grant.
10:49Which is one of the great casting coups of all time, to make a complete heel likable, interesting, understandable. It's a great performance. And so few people look at how good an actor Cary Grant is, aside from, you know, his enormous good looks and charm. That's surface. That's evident.
11:12That's, again, a suspense element that Hitch was really good at exploiting, which was, what is this person really like? Are they good or bad? Or are they somewhere in between? They were usually somewhere in between.
11:22It was, it was breakthrough. It was a, it was a bold request on Hitchcock's part. And it was a bolder response for, for Grant to accept it and pull it off.
11:34The name Devlin comes from a 1944 novel by Ben Hecht called I Hate Actors, in which the protagonist's name was Chester Devlin.
11:44Look at his name, Devlin. It connotes the devil.
11:48Who, through his inaction and through sometimes direct action, makes the Ingrid Bergman character go through trials, almost tests, almost proof of whether she's a worthy woman or a whore.
12:04All right. You've been sober for eight days. As far as I know, you've made no new conquests.
12:10Well, that's something. Eight days. Practically whitewashed.
12:16I'm very happy. Why won't you let me be happy?
12:21He was able to show a person who could have been considered a bad girl as a good girl and allow her to do things that weren't generally allowed.
12:29And the reason he got by with it, he thought, was not only a matter of script and delivery and story, but it was because Ingrid Bergman was so loved and so good in films that people saw whatever she did must be all right.
12:44Alicia in Notorious is really one of the most complex and interesting characters in all of Hitchcock and Bergman is so on it. It's incredible.
12:56She's basically sent on a very interesting moral journey.
13:01Hitchcock, differently from many directors of his time, gives his women a considerable degree of agency, allows them to be the people who carry the plot forward.
13:15Oh, so there is a job.
13:18You remember a man named Sebastian?
13:23It's quite a big burden that is placed on her. She has to be on guard every second. She has to be acting every second. It's a performance she's doing. So we're seeing a performance within a performance in the film. And she has to be aware that the end game might be her life.
13:43We see Alicia, played by Ingrid Bergman, from the same kind of judgmental point of view as does Devlin.
13:53She was a tramp. She was an alcoholic. And she was a loose woman. She was notorious.
13:58In the early drafts of the script, she was a prostitute. And she's an alcoholic prostitute, just straight up. And this is a film that went through lots of back and forth with the production code administration.
14:09She's out of control. She's unpleasant. He doesn't much like her. He sees her as a kind of a drunk party girl. And he's right to see her in that way.
14:19The character of Alicia was the perfect vehicle for Ben Heck to explore his anger at what had happened to the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.
14:27Alicia's father's a Nazi sympathizer, and she'd stood idly by while he spread his poison.
14:32So now she has to debase herself and go into the belly of the beast and sacrifice her own morality to defeat a greater evil.
14:40And it's only by doing this that she proves herself worthy of being loved.
14:45She has to make the ultimate sacrifice before she can be redeemed.
14:49And it's a woman who takes charge of her destiny in a way that puts her at the mercy of forces that she has no control over and that might kill her.
14:56She is both assertive and utterly victimized, right, at the same time, which is wonderfully paradoxical.
15:02Hitchcock had a maxim that he took from the French playwright Sardu, which was torture the women.
15:08And what he meant was torture the female character, torture the women in the audience, put them through it.
15:14So that's what he does. And it's quite an astonishing odyssey that that woman has to go on.
15:21Wait a minute. I'm going to kiss you.
15:24No, he'd only think we...
15:25That's what I wanted to think.
15:26You'd better stay upstairs, Joseph, if they may need you.
15:34Yes, sir.
15:41Oh, Dad, oh, Dad.
15:44Notorious is incredibly powerful about the things that romance make people do and the consequences that they can have.
15:55The movie does not encourage us to suppose that she's doing what she's doing out of patriotism.
16:01She's doing it because, like Dev, she's been in love with him from the beginning.
16:08And she's doing it for him.
16:10But it is antipathetic to love.
16:14Both of these characters, in other words, undergo a journey over the course of the film.
16:19And it's a journey in which they cross paths.
16:21Her journey is towards a kind of redemption from the person that she had been.
16:28A kind of a metamorphosis into the person that she can be.
16:33I find that profoundly moving.
16:35Alicia.
16:36Somehow, for that period in his life, Hitchcock was able to give full credit to the notion which is that love can indeed transform people.
16:55That potential is there throughout Hitchcock films.
17:00But it only rises to the surface fully and gets its full imaginative expression in this one film, Notorious.
17:08Devlin wants Alicia to turn down the mission because he wants her to be pure.
17:12She wants Devlin to stand up for her.
17:14But he needs Alicia to stand up for herself.
17:17He needs her to somehow defeat the enemy and yet still remain pure.
17:21But increasingly, as the film goes on, he realizes that he has to stand up for her because she can't remain pure.
17:27If you remain pure in the face of a threat like the Nazis, you end up dead.
17:31We know what's going to happen, but it refuses to happen.
17:35Devlin again and again and again puts himself between his own emotions and his own desires and Bergman.
17:42Here's a different kind of suspense, a kind of erotic suspense that Hitchcock is creating.
17:48And it pays off handsomely in Notorious.
17:51Notorious is one of the favorite films, I think, of so many people today.
17:57And it was certainly a favorite film of Ingrid Bergman, who loved doing it.
18:02And the most famous scene from it usually, I think, is considered to be a long kiss,
18:10in which Alfred Hitchcock filmed a long, long kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman at a time when long kisses weren't allowed.
18:19There were limitations on how long you could have characters kiss in films, according to the production code back in the 30s and 40s.
18:27So the way Alfred Hitchcock got around that was he filmed them kissing for a few seconds,
18:34then they moved apart and continued their kiss, then they moved apart and continued the kiss.
18:38Hitchcock said that what you see in that scene is actually a scene with three characters.
18:44There's Cary Grant, there's Ingrid Bergman, and there's the camera that's right here.
18:49That camera is Hitchcock.
18:51In the famous love scene, that was a purpose because I didn't even want to cut there because I wanted to retain and embrace each other.
19:01I felt that the camera, we should all embrace. They should remain in their embrace and we should join them.
19:09And the only way to do that was with the camera?
19:11So I did the camera and followed them, never left the close-up.
19:17As I say, based on not breaking the romantic moment.
19:24Yeah.
19:25That was the important, it was the movement of that camera.
19:29The idea came to me many, many years before when I was in the train going from Boulogne,
19:36after crossing from England to Boulogne in France, to Paris, TAP, E-T-A-P-L-E-S, which is just outside Boulogne.
19:44Sunday afternoon, there was a big red brick factory, rather old factory,
19:51and one end of the factory was a huge, high brick wall.
19:56There were two little figures at the bottom of the wall, comparatively small,
20:00a boy and a girl, and the boy was urinating against the wall.
20:05But the girl had all of his arm and she never let go.
20:08And she looked down at what he was doing and then looked around at the scenery
20:12and down again to see how far he got on, you know, and so forth.
20:16And that gave me the idea, you know, she can't let go.
20:19Romance must not be interrupted, even by urinating.
20:23And you were in the train at the time?
20:25I was passing in the train, yes, off on the train window.
20:28Which gives a feeling of a tracking shot in the way.
20:30Well, I didn't combine that.
20:36Goodbye.
20:37Goodbye.
20:39He didn't ever arbitrarily choose an angle.
20:43It was always for a particular reason.
20:45And it always had to do with telling the story.
20:47He always used to say, clarify, clarify, clarify.
20:50He wanted things to be clear to the audience.
20:53He didn't want the audience saying what's going on, what's happening.
20:55Then he felt that he'd lose them.
20:57Suspense is based on knowledge.
20:59He spins an entire crane shot full of a room full of people
21:03and music and dancing and big party and everything.
21:06And we go down just to focus on a key.
21:10And I asked Hitchcock why he had chosen to do it that way.
21:13He said, well, it was the equivalent of saying,
21:15in this huge party with all these people, everything's going on,
21:20they're not aware of this big drama that's going on,
21:24which all comes down, the crux of it all has to do with one little key.
21:28So it's a way of saying that visually.
21:30He was brilliant at that.
21:32That's what we love about Hitchcock.
21:33We love those kinds of spectacular shots that are also tremendously meaningful.
21:37They constructed a huge wooden crane so that the camera could come down from a high shot of the party.
21:45There was no such crane that existed.
21:48So they had to build an elevator.
21:51They built an elevator in this set and put the camera on the platform and lowered it into that shot.
22:01It's just amazing.
22:04That's heavy stuff.
22:06That's Hitchcock.
22:08Where'd you get the key off his chain?
22:10Yes.
22:11That's how the liquor doesn't run out and start him down the cellar for more.
22:16Hitchcock would give an example between suspense and shock.
22:21I'll give you an example.
22:23Surprise or suspense?
22:26Now we come to our old analogy of the bomb.
22:30You and I are sitting and talking here,
22:33having a very innocuous conversation about nothing.
22:38Boring.
22:39Suddenly, boom, the thing goes up and they're shocked for 15 seconds.
22:45Now we change it.
22:47Play the same scene.
22:48Insert the bomb.
22:50Show that the bomb is placed there.
22:53Establish that it's going to go off at one o'clock.
22:57It's now a quarter of one, ten of one.
23:00Show a clock on the wall.
23:02Now go over the same scene.
23:04Now our conversation becomes very vital by sheer nonsense.
23:09Don't talk nonsense.
23:10Look under the table, you fool.
23:13Now they're working for 10 minutes,
23:15instead of being surprised for 15 seconds.
23:18I much prefer the latter form of dramatic exposition.
23:23So in Notorious, the bottles of champagne are the bomb ticking, basically.
23:30And every time you cut to them, you say,
23:33Oh my God, they're going down to the cellar.
23:35And of course, that's the wonderful thing,
23:37that's the brilliant thing that Hitchcock used to do.
23:40He's able to, he understood the psychology of the audience.
23:43Psychology of the audience is that they want something to happen,
23:47and they don't want something to happen.
23:48That's what creates the suspense.
23:50They don't know what they want.
23:51So it creates a kind of distinct, palpable unease.
23:57Because you're torn between, as a viewer, wanting something to happen,
24:03and as an empathetic viewer, not wanting something to happen,
24:07because you care about the people.
24:08But you're torn.
24:09It's fascinating how that works.
24:11Sorry, Alicia.
24:13Please go.
24:14Good night.
24:15Alex, don't be foolish.
24:17I came down here because he threatened to make a scene,
24:18unless I'd see him alone.
24:19He kissed you.
24:20Notorious is not just two people.
24:21It's three people.
24:22And the third person is extraordinary Sebastian.
24:24Hitchcock wanted Clifton Webb for Sebastian,
24:25but I'm glad he got Claude Rains.
24:26Selznick, who is no longer a producer, says,
24:28get Claude Rains for this part.
24:30He's perfect.
24:31He's perfect.
24:32He's perfect.
24:33He's perfect.
24:34He's perfect.
24:35He's perfect.
24:36He's perfect.
24:37He's perfect.
24:38He's perfect.
24:39He's perfect.
24:40He's perfect.
24:41He's perfect.
24:42He says, get Claude Rains for this part.
24:45He's perfect.
24:46And grab him.
24:47Don't wait.
24:48We need somebody as important, if not more important,
24:51than the Bergman and Cary Grant characters,
24:53because if this guy doesn't work right,
24:56it's going to harm the whole structure.
24:58So they signed Claude Rains, which was a major number.
25:01He's a fabulous actor.
25:03There wasn't anything he couldn't play.
25:05He could play sympathetic.
25:07He could play victim.
25:08He could play nasty, as he does in this movie.
25:12He was great.
25:13Well, what do I do?
25:15There's nothing to do.
25:16I'm done.
25:17Finished.
25:21I'll find out.
25:22When you analyze it, it's a really ugly story.
25:25Feel better?
25:27What do you care how I feel?
25:31It's just that it's done so eloquently and so touchingly,
25:34but at the end, when she says, oh, you love me, you love me,
25:37when he finally says, I love you,
25:39and it's very, very moving, actually.
25:42I love you.
25:43I couldn't bear seeing you and him together.
25:53Oh, you love me.
25:55Why didn't you tell me before?
25:57I know.
25:59I know.
26:00It's her tragedy.
26:01I mean, she had to go through all that.
26:03He was the guy who was taking it badly,
26:04but she actually had to do it.
26:06Brace up. Here he comes.
26:07There were at least three endings
26:09before they finally settled on the one in the film.
26:12And so they hired a bunch of different writers
26:14and had Ben Heck, but they also had Clifford Odets.
26:16They had a bunch of different writers
26:17write endings to the movie that kept the movie going.
26:20No room, Sebastian.
26:21Oh, but you must take me. They're watching me.
26:23It's your headache.
26:24No, please take me. Please. Please. Please.
26:26Madam Sebastian and her son joined Alicia and Devlin in the car.
26:33Madam Sebastian shoots her son in the back of the head
26:36and is preparing to kill Alicia when Devlin overturns the car.
26:40And second unit footage of this was actually shot in Rio
26:45of a car overturning.
26:46There was a version,
26:48where she doesn't survive, she dies, from the poisoning.
26:52And the last scene is Cary Grant in that sidewalk cafe.
26:56And he overhears another couple talking about her
26:58and one of them says, oh, she was notorious.
27:01The ending is itself rather perfect.
27:05It's the payoff of many things.
27:08The relationship of Alex Sebastian to his Nazi colleagues,
27:12the relationship that he has with his mother,
27:15the relationship that he has toward Ingrid Bergman,
27:20whom he still loves, everything else notwithstanding.
27:24The relationship that Grant and Bergman have to one another.
27:28It's the perfect ending to a perfectly realized film.
27:33That film is perfect in every way.
27:42It's just the right people in the right place,
27:44in the right roles, in front of the camera and behind the camera,
27:48doing peak work.
27:51It's, you know, it's everything.
27:53It's a romance.
27:54It's a thriller.
27:55It's a film noir.
27:56It's truly one of the most twisted love stories
28:00in the history of Hollywood.