A Film and its Era: Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’ is released in 1946. Portrait of a film: after the fall of the Third Reich, the U.S. Secret Service, in order to prevent terrorist attacks, infiltrates the web of Nazi expatriates in South America. Hitchcock encrusts a love story, morally torrid and completely undercover, in the setting of a classic spy narrative. Portrait of an era: the script is finished in January 1945; in the film, the Nazis store uranium in wine bottles. Hitchcock and his screenwriter are placed under surveillance for suspicion of spying on the atomic bomb. The real American nuclear warheads are launched in August, 1945, against Japan. Portrait of a director: Hitchcock films ‘Notorious’ immediately after having supervised the editing, in London, of the first images filmed by the US Army in the extermination camps, a film of horrors that would not be released until 1984. The filming takes place during the Nuremburg Trials which judge the Nazi criminals.