Recommended Noirs

Behold Notorious! (RKO, 1946) directed by Alfred Hitchcock! written by Ben Hecht! Here's a thing about great talents like Hitch and Hecht: they could do anything! Hitchcock ended up doing a bunch of noirs. In fact, I'd say three of his top ten were noirs, including this one. In this one Cary Grant is a cold hearted government agent named Devlin, who must seduce the beautiful and temporarily nihistic daughter of a Nazi Spy, Alicia Huberman(Ingrid Bergman), into undertaking a dangerous mission in South America. The mission calls for Bergman to marry Claude Rains, as he and a cadre of uncaught Nazi's plan to get things going again. That's when things get intense. Now, even a non-noir about confronting rooting out Nazi's would be cool, the attitudes played here are totally noir and all the cooler for it. Devlin, like Sam Spade, seems to have situational relationship with any sort of ethics, so does Alicia Huberman, who's basically trying to party herself to death when they hook-up. The story is great and Hitchcock's feel for noir was sublime. Check it out!