I stumbled upon a black and white Hitchcock movie I have never seen called Notorious the other evening and it was,upon reflection, very strange to me. it starred Carey Grant and a very young Ingrid Bergman with Claud Raines of Casa Blanca fame. The story line deals with Bergman as the daughter of a nazi sympathizer in the US who betrayed his country and was given twenty years imprisonment His daughter who despises him and what he did is conscripted more or less to be a spy for the United States in Brazil and actually live in the house of a large group of Nazis. She even marries one of them to obtain information. Nothing much happened at all and yet I felt a wreck by the end. Purely mind bending and I was tired at the end of it.

It happens to be my all time favorite, followed by The Thirty Nine Steps and then Rear Window. The gentleman in Thirty Nine Steps was so deeply asthmatic he had to have oxygen on the set and that made me so sad. He had immigrated from Ireland to the United States and could find no work and was starving. He  would write his mother back home and tell her he was doing well so she should not be grieved and afraid for him. The story goes that he was in a theatre or something at the same time Tyrone Powers was and was discovered by him and got work.

I absolutely hated Carousel with Carey Grant and Audrey Hepburn, it was vicious and ugly and just wore me out trying to even fathom it. Oh and I love North by Northwest, stellar. How I never saw Notorious before is a mystery to me.

 

Brego said when speaking about the subliminal aspects of Hitchcock movies:"one is a cow standing in a paddock....".   

Somehow I cannot think that a cow unharmed in a paddock would worry me. However I might get up from my chair and go make a milkshake or have cheese and crackers or cream of asparagus soup.

 

I forgot, how I am absolutely amazed at , that I have Dial My For Murder and that I should have put that second after Vertigo..I like Princess Grace and I believe that may have been her first acting role, or at least the first large one. I like the ambience, the retro feel, clothing and I especially like Robert Cummings. He seemed a very dear person to me, unlike his nemesis who played Tony. I read, I hope it is not true, that he and Grace had a relationship which harmed his marriage and he had twin babies at that time.