NO-TORI-OUS: Hitchcock and the sensuality of politics

After each Free Film Friday there will be an essay that wanders around the film freely and sometimes, alas, confusingly.  Last week you enduring my thoughts on Rebecca. This week on Notorious, seen being shot at the The Plaza in New York City. All this in what must be the world's longest photo caption to say that the essay presupposes, eh hem, that you have seen the film Notorious.  Last night.  In Vertigo Falls.  And you thought the films were really free--Ha!

Hitchcock shied away from discussing politics with journalists though he told a reporter once when asked about his politics, "No-Tory-us" (Tory meaning the more conservative party in England).

Alfred Hitchcock in reality was not so enigmatic.  He was rather openly politically and socially liberal.  I think it is safe to say that on the most liberally charged issue of our day, Hitchcock and his wife would have sided with gay marriage (in spite of, or perhaps because of his Jesuit Catholicism) and, like many Brits, would have favored common sense background checks and restraint in terms of owning a gun. In the sadly cliched gun's defense, Hitch's films are undoubtedly arguments for the improper use of almost any household object, but as Slate pointed out in May, Hitchcock's Bang Your Dead is certainly not going to be opening the next NRA rally.   

And Hitchcock's almost non-stop work with gay themes and his complete acceptance of actors, writers and craftsman who were openly gay in the private lives that Hitchcock would have known makes it safe (in my mind) to assume his position would be liberal here as well.

Not a very smooth transition for Notorious though which may be Hitchcock's least gay film and his most overtly romantic and "straight" sexual film. And other than the jack booted and pistol packing motorcycle cop, there is not a single cliche weapon in the film.

Notorious swims in a sensuality and politics that later would revisit in lighter turns a decade or so later with North by Northwest.  Both films concern using women and their sex-ability as political pawns in post-war politics.

Cary Grant anchors both films, but he is at his finest in Notorious.  Certainly the cinematography of Ted Tetzloff and the presence of Ingrid Bergman give the film a sensuality unlike any other Hitchcock film.  It is a career depth of visual and story sensuality matched only by Vertigo (perhaps the unmade first Frenzy, otherwise known as Kaleidoscope, would have been Hitchcock's "erotic" moment.  His notes indicate a perverse and tantalizing mix of violence and eroticism, saturated color schemes and cinema verite flourishes--ah, the perfection of permanent anticipation; the unmade classic)

[BTW  Does anyone know why Notorious was Ted Tetzlaff's last movie he filmed?  He went on to direct for a decade, but then, just as suddenly: gone.  He died in the 1995 at the age of 91, and worked very consistently shooting an incredible list of films, including My Man Godfrey.  Then--gone.  I will do the ubiquitous Google for details but IMDB says nothing about why he vanished after Hitchcock's film.  Not that I'm implying . . .never mind, too many Hitchcock films in the psyche.)

Notorious, a classically great film with a pedigree to kill for (come on, a tight tight and perfect, oh so perfect script by the immortal Ben Hecht) has that ability to explode the mind of a cinema sensualist with possibilities, ideas--fantasies, lurid in detail (I mean that in a nice way, of course).  During this big bang it's easy to run circles around the cold hard politically messy structure at the heart of the film--governments using civilians and spies and combatants.  In each film, suggesting that this was Hitchcock's personal belief, the question is begged--when will we stop doing this?

Never.  And in that same sentiment expressed the philosopher Harry Lime at the top of a ferris wheel, cinema is better for that.  Heavens, the American cinema has certainly mastered the equivalent building the perfect cuckoo clock by the potato truck load.  Without the compelled Mata Hari's, where would our rich cinema noir history be?
 

 

"Daisy and buttercups."