Art, Architecture, and Film: The Encounter between the Post-War Psyche and the Frame in Hitchcock’s Notorious
Hitchcock is well known for his perfectionistic tendencies, carefully constructing film sets through the use of the storyboard; each scene artistically composed, designed and blocked to a cinematic effectiveness that creates tension, anxiety and suspense. In Notorious, he designs sets and scenes with precision. Nothing exists within the shot that is not purposely placed in exactitude. The result is an aesthetically seamless flow throughout this film. While the Egyptian theme is subdued in this film, it is there, quietly and subversively. Hitchcock employs pyramidal composition as a means to employ the Egyptian theme, and he also places objects d’art throughout the interiors; positioning pyramids throughout the sets and drawing on the triangle motif as much as possible.
In the décor of Alicia’s Rio de Janiero apartment, two statues, one a Hindu god, referencing the Mata Hari, the other a bust of Cleopatra, reference the sacred power of the feminine as well as the power of seduction. And both allegorize particular aspects of Alicia’s journey. Alicia acts as a modern Mata Hari; seductress and spy. She nearly dies of poison, in similar fashion to Cleopatra’s infamous suicide. Notably, the film features pyramids and triangles throughout the set, specifically where they are built into the design of the doors of the FBI offices, with three pyramids inlaid upon them. The set design ultimately works as a means to allegorize the post war psyche and to subversively play upon the victory of the Allies.
The encounter between composition, frame and narrative formulated by Alfred Hitchcock in his films highlight the filmmaker’s background in art and art history as well as his interest in psychology and the dark side of human nature. The filmmaker’s mastery of the art of film is exhibited through the employment of cinematic techniques that are grounded in fundamental artistic practices, such as composition and lighting, which are often overlooked. The compositional strategies that he employs, developed through his perfection of the storyboard, invokes the association between art and film technology to design shots that perpetuate a dialogue between narrative, camera and frame. In particular, it is through the engagement of art and architecture as well as symbols and motifs, that Hitchcock carefully constructs compositions that allegorize his films and deepen the narratives; individual shots become allegories of the underlying meaning within the film.
Notorious is arguably one of Hitchcock’s best films of the forties, as noted by Donald Spoto, “It is surely one of the dozen best in his catalog”.1 It stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in a complex narrative involving American FBI agents spying on Nazi’s who are presumably hiding uranium ore (the MacGuffin that, in the plot, works as a substance that could possibly be utilized to develop an atomic bomb). In this spy thriller, Hitchcock employs an Egyptian theme that serves as an allegory that represents the post-war psyche of the West in the year following the end of World War II. This theme derives from his British roots and recalls the victory of the Allies in the North African Campaign in 1943 that ultimately stopped the Axis forces in that region. The film screened in August 1946, approximately one year after the atomic bombs devastated Japan and shocked the world with the horror of the reality of the Holocaust.
The story opens in a courtroom with an American being sentenced to life in prison for spying for the Nazi’s. The daughter of the spy, Alicia Huberman, played by Ingrid Bergman, is distraught and spends the following evening throwing a wild drunken party where Devlin, played by Cary Grant, appears and seduces her in the late morning hours. It is during this first meeting that their desire for one another is sealed and Devlin later engages her as a counterspy for the FBI. Her target is Alexander Sebastian, played by Claude Rains, who is harboring a group of Nazis in his mansion in Rio de Janiero. Although she and Devlin are in love, Alicia is pressured by Devlin via the FBI into seducing and eventually marrying Sebastian in order to spy on him and the Nazis that he is working with. The character of Sebastian is featured as an impotent man who still lives with his elderly mother who, in typical Hitchockian style, is characterized as the classic overly-controlling, domineering and terrifying mother-figure; the archetypal foreboding matriarchal character that appears in films such as Rebecca and Psycho. As such, in Notorious, it is Alexander’s mother who discovers that Alicia, her daughter-in-law, is a spy. She and Alexander attempt to poison her, thereby creating the perfect scenario for her lover, Devlin, to rescue her from the arms of her Nazi husband and his mother.
Published : Interdisciplinary Humanities 32.1 (2015): 53-65
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