Always a manipulator of audience perceptions and expectations, director Alfred Hitchcock did a pretty audacious thing for 1945 (the year production on Notorious began) - right at the end of World War II, he created a sympathetic Nazi character in a romantic thriller involving German fascists living secretly in South America. Not that Hitchcock portrays the activities and philosophies of the Nazis in a positive light or makes Sebastian (played by Claude Rains) the "hero" of the story. That distinction goes to Cary Grant as FBI agent T.R. Devlin, and there again, our sympathies are toyed with. Assigned to enlist the American-born daughter (Ingrid Bergman) of a Nazi war criminal in a plot to trap the Germans, Devlin often appears cagey, tight, bitter, and apparently insensitive to the young woman's feelings and the danger she's in. On the other hand, Sebastian is shown to be a cultured man who truly loves her, a put-upon, almost tender man with a domineering mother, fatally betrayed by the one person he cares most about. At the end of the movie, you almost feel sorry for the Nazi. Notorious was the first true love story Hitchcock made, rich in passion, deception, reversals, and obsession. It was the significant start of his exploration of the themes, relationships, and techniques that would mark his mature work for the remainder of his career.
NOTORIOUS was initiated by independent producer David O. Selznick (producer of Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940)) as a project for two of his contractees, director Alfred Hitchcock and actress Ingrid Bergman. Hitchcock developed a script with writer Ben Hecht, and Selznick signed freelance actor Cary Grant to play the male lead. Before production began on the picture, Selznick sold the "package" for the film the stars, director and script to RKO-Radio Pictures for $800,000 and 50% of the eventual net profits. The "packaging" of movies is a frequent occurrence in today's Hollywood financial arrangements, but it was unusual in the 1940s. Selznick needed ready cash to finish another picture he was producing, Duel in the Sun (1946).
Actor Claude Rains was several inches shorter than actress Ingrid Bergman, so the filmmakers had to devise various methods, like ramps and boxes, to hide the height difference in their scenes together.
The Hays Office, which administered the strict Production Code censorship guidelines of the day, was at the height of their powers in the mid-1940s. The Code forbade any displays of passion and on-screen kisses could only be a few seconds in length. To sidestep these restrictions, Hitchcock had his actors (Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman) perform a long close-up kissing scene made of several consecutive short nibbles and kisses, all while moving around a room, talking on a telephone, and discussing the evening's chicken dinner!
While Hitchcock and his writer Ben Hecht were working on the script for NOTORIOUS, World War II was still being waged in the Pacific and the Atomic Bomb had yet to be dropped on Japan. As an important plot device, they had chosen to use uranium ore hidden in wine bottles. The importance of uranium in the development of the Atomic Bomb was not yet public knowledge, and Hitchcock and Hecht went to see Dr. Robert Millikan at the California Institute of Technology to get more information about the properties of uranium. As a result (according to Hitchcock in later interviews), he aroused the suspicions of the FBI and was followed for months afterward.
Hitchcock traditionally made a cameo in each of his American films, and NOTORIOUS is no exception. He can be spotted about an hour into the film, as one of the partygoers in Alexander Sebastian's mansion, drinking champagne.
Director Hitchcock's brand of suspense plots often featured an object that was important to the characters in the story, but about which the audience doesn't really care. Hitchcock called this plot device the "MacGuffin," and one of the best examples of a MacGuffin in one of his films is the Uranium in Notorious - it is the object which drives the plot, but it has no real emotional importance for the audience.
Uranium is a metallic chemical element, and has the highest atomic weight of naturally occurring elements. Uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope, meaning it can sustain a chain reaction of nuclear fission. The radioactive nature of uranium was discovered in 1896 by Antoine Becquerel, and research by Enrico Fermi and others starting in 1934 lead to its use in Atomic weapons, such as those dropped on Japan in August, 1945.
Enrico Fermi led a team that initiated the first artificial nuclear chain reaction in December, 1942. The experiment was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, and occurred in a laboratory built below the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. "Splitting the Atom" was an important part of the Allies developing the Atomic Bomb the Chicago Pile-1 reaction utilized six tons of uranium metal.
At the time that NOTORIOUS was made, it was thought that uranium was relatively rare, and that the number of countries that could develop nuclear weapons could be limited to those that could get their hands on the scant supplies available. In the decade following the end of the war, however, numerous deposits of uranium were discovered around the world. Limits to proliferation then became technological and financial, since it is expensive to "enrich" uranium to weapons-grade quality.
CASABLANCA (1942, Ultimate Collectors Edition)
Humphrey Bogart is cafe owner Rick, Ingrid Bergman his lost love Ilsa, and Paul Henreid the resistance leader Ilsa is now married to in this classic tale of romance and espionage during WWII.
GASLIGHT (1944)
Set in the Victorian era, this remake of the 1940 British film stars Charles Boyer as a schemer who plots to make Ingrid Bergman believe she's on the verge of insanity.
CHARADE (1963, Special Edition)
Newly widowed Audrey Hepburn is stalked and purchased in Paris by a group of men who think her late husband told her the location of a hidden fortune. Cary Grant co-stars in this Alfred Hitchcock-like thriller from Stanley Donen.
SUSPICION (1941)
A recently married woman comes to believe that dashing husband is a murderer, and that his next victim will be her! Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant star in this Alfred Hitchcock thriller.
SPELLBOUND (1945)
The "prison of the mind" is explored in this Alfred Hitchcock classic set in a private asylum and starring Gregory Peck as the new doctor and Ingrid Bergman as the clinic psychiatrist.
NOTORIOUS (1946)
Ingrid Bergman, daughter of a war criminal, is persuaded by U.S. agents to marry Claude Rains, head of a Nazi spy ring in Brazil...much to the distress of agent Cary Grant. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Notorious (1946) -- (Movie Clip) Strange Love Affair
Notorious (1946) -- (Movie Clip) We'll Have A Picnic
While Hitchcock and his writer Ben Hecht were working on the script for 
Uranium is a metallic chemical element, and has the highest atomic weight of naturally occurring elements. Uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope, meaning it can sustain a chain reaction of nuclear fission. The radioactive nature of uranium was discovered in 1896 by Antoine Becquerel, and research by Enrico Fermi and others starting in 1934 lead to its use in Atomic weapons, such as those dropped on Japan in August, 1945.
