CinemaSerf
7
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Jul 07, 2022
Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant just ooze charisma in this classic Hitchcock story of espionage and romance. She ("Alicia") has taken to the bottle following the conviction of her Nazi father and is heading down the slippery slope when she is approached by "Devlin" (Grant) who offers her a chance to redeem herself. She is to ingratiate herself with a group of her father's cohorts in Rio and feed back her intelligence to the CIA. Once in Rio, she is reunited with her arch-Nazi admirer "Alexander" (Claude Rains) and, at the insistence of her new boss (Louis Calhern) she marries him. What now ensues is a cleverly developing tale of treachery and betrayal tempered with plenty of humour and a little romance (of course she and "Devlin" fall for each other). The photography is both grand and intimate, Roy Webb has scored this perfectly and Hitchcock uses Ben Hecht's story to full effect. This is a classic piece of cinema that I saw quite recently on a big screen - and it is well worth watching again!
