Alfred Hitchcock made some of the most unforgettable thrillers ever, but what happened behind the scenes of ‘Notorious‘ feels almost unbelievable.
The movie had it all: romance, espionage, and danger. However, as he was creating this story, something unexpected began to happen around him. Hitchcock noticed he was suddenly getting a kind of attention no filmmaker ever wants, and it all started with one “harmless” plot.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Harmless Storyline Brought All the Trouble
Hitchcock stepped into Hollywood in the 1940s, determined to make films his way. By the time he was working on ‘Notorious‘, he had already worked with producer David O. Selznick on big titles like Rebecca, Spellbound, and The Paradine Case. But their clashes made Hitchcock crave more creative control. When ‘Notorious‘, written by Ben Hecht, moved from Selznick’s hands to RKO, Hitchcock finally found that freedom, and he poured it straight into the film.
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The movie was about an American agent, T.R. Devlin, played by Cary Grant, who recruits Alicia Huberman, Ingrid Bergman’s character, and the daughter of a convicted German war criminal. Together, they dive into a risky undercover mission involving a group of German scientists hiding in South America. Together, they went on a risky undercover mission involving a group of German scientists hiding in South America.
Hitchcock made sure the plot had a perfect nudge to set everything in motion: a MacGuffin. This time, the MacGuffin was uranium hidden in wine bottles. Hitchcock believed audiences wouldn’t care about the uranium at all; it just needed to exist to move Devlin and Alicia into danger. But the moment he chose that specific element, he unknowingly stepped into danger himself.
How The Plot Of ‘Notorious’ Became Too Serious
The timing of Notorious couldn’t have been more dramatic. Hitchcock started developing the film while the U.S. government was secretly working on the Manhattan Project. No one outside the project was supposed to know anything about uranium. But here was Hitchcock, using it casually as a thriller’s plot device.
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During his long conversation with François Truffaut years later, Hitchcock explained how he and Ben Hecht brainstormed what Alicia would uncover inside the enemy’s base. They wanted something simple and visual, and uranium seemed perfect. But Hitchcock recalled telling a doubtful producer that uranium really was used to make atomic bombs. Before filming, he’d even heard hints about some highly confidential scientific activity happening in New Mexico.
Was It Much Ado About Nothing?
To better understand the science, Hitchcock and Hecht visited a doctor at Caltech. When they asked how big an atomic bomb might be, the scientist panicked and warned them that the question could get them, and especially him, into serious trouble. Hitchcock later said the doctor basically asked if they wanted themselves arrested. According to Hitchcock, that warning was all it took. He claimed the FBI followed him for about three months after that meeting.
However, the war ended, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, and ‘Notorious‘ was released safely the following year. But the brush with the FBI turned this thriller into a memorable one. Even with federal eyes on him, Hitchcock stayed focused. When the producer questioned whether using uranium was ridiculous, Hitchcock reportedly told him that the MacGuffin was never meant to matter.
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Hitchcock reminded him that ‘Notorious‘ was really about two people falling in love while dealing with suspicions and danger. He even said he would have changed the uranium to diamonds if needed, because audiences didn’t really care. They were watching Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. And he wasn’t wrong.
Grant and Bergman delivered two of their career’s best performances. Their chemistry etched every scene in our hearts, and Hitchcock matched their energy with some of his most iconic camera work, like the famous crane shot that zooms all the way to the key in Alicia’s hand. Even though the story technically included a material used to make nuclear bombs, the real explosive force in ‘Notorious‘ came from its emotion.
