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Notorious (1946) Production RKO, Hitchcock
Screenplay:Ben Hetch from a story by Hitchcock
CAST: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Claude Rains, Madame Konstantin, Louis Calhern, Moroni Olsen, 
Claude Rains, madame Arkadin, Ingrid Bergman PLOT: The daughter of an American Nazi Sympathizer (Bergman)is in postwar Brazil, where she had been dispatched by an FBI agent (Grant) to spy on a gang of neo-Nazis. The Nazis are led by Alexander Sebastian (Rains) who at Grant insistence she eventually marries. Bergman discovers that the Nazis are plotting to build an atom bomb and is slowly poisoned by her husband only to be rescued by Grant at the very end, leaving rains to face death at the hands of his Nazi cohorts. 
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman "the longest screen kiss" 
Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman The passion between Grant and Bergman in their first film together is remarkable, as is Claude Rains'chilling portrayal of the villanous but strangely Sympathetic Alex ( He got an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor as did Ben Hetch for his script). The ruthlessness of Grant toward Bergman is deftly handled, but before his manipulation comes to the fore, there is a marvelously charged love scene between the two.
At the time the moral arbiters of Hollywood insisted that no screen kiss should last longer than three seconds. but Hitchcock managed to film Hollywood longest kiss' making them interrupt the actual kiss every theree seconds and interposing something else and resuming the kiss. "Notorious was a great critical andcommercial success; made for just under $2 million, the film took over $9 million within a year of its release.
PLOT: Notorious marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Hitchcock and Edith Head, the legendary costume designer (she worked on a total of 11 Hitchcock films over 30 years) 
Rope (1948) Production: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Hume Cronyn, Alfred Hitchcock, Arthur Laurents, from a play by Patrick Hamilton
CAST: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger,
Cedric Hardwicke,
Hitchcock directing one scene of "Rope" The film was shot in eight 10-minute takes to tell the story in an entirely cinematic but innovative method, with the the action of the plot confined to the apartment and the actual length of the film. 
PLOT: Two young bachelors,(whose relationship is clearly homosexual)the chilling,calm Dall and the weak,flustered Granger,strangle a friend for kicks,stuffing his body into a chest in their appartment, where later the same night they hold a dinner party, literally over his dead body. Among the guests are the dead boy's parents,girlfriend and the murderers' old college professor (Stewart) whose suspicions are aroused by the two men's guilty reactions, and he eventually discovers the body and turns the murderers over to the police. 
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| Farley Granger, James Stewart, John Dall |
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The Paradine Case (1947) Screenplay: Alma Reville, David O.Selznick based on a novel by Robert Hichens.
CAST: Gregory Peck, Alida Valli, Ann Todd, Charles Laughton, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Coburn, Louis Jourdan, 
Alida Valli, Gregory Peck PLOT:
The story concerns Mrs.Paradine (Alida Valli) who is standing trail for the murder of her blind husband. She denies it, but during the trial, it emerges that she has been having an affair with her husband's valet (Jourdan). Mrs Paradine's defense counsel Anthony Keane (Peck) meanwhile has fallen in love with her. His wife (Ann Todd) is lusted after by the trial judge Horfield (Laughton), who is contemptuous of her husband's performance in court. Trying to save his client 's life, Peck manages to break down Jourdan in the dock, causing his subsequent suicide. When she learns of her lover'd death, Valli, broken hearted and with nothing left to live for, confesses in the dock that she did murder her husband and implies that Peck is in love with her. Peck leaves the court in shame but the end sees his wife stand by him. 
The Courtroom:from left,Gregory Peck, Alida Valli, Louis Jourdan 
Hitchcock was not satisfied with the choice of actors for the movie, especially Valli as Mrs Paradine. the film was her first in English and she was not too sure. Peck gave a strong performance but it was Laughton and especially Ethel barrymre who stole the movie. The actress earned a Best supporting Actress Nomination. The film was not particularly successfull. 
Alfred Hitchcock behind Gregory Peck in The Paradine case CAMEO
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| Ann Todd, Gregory Peck |
Under Capricorn (1949) Production: Transatlantic-Warner Bros.
Screenplay: James Bridie,Hume Cronyn (adaptation) from the novel by Helen Simpson
CAST: Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker 
Margeret Leighton, Joseph Cotten, Ingrid Bergman PLOT: A turgid historical potboiler, the film is a rehash of the themes of"Rebecca", with Bergman as a young innocent trapped in a large sinister house with a distant husband(Cotten) and a housekeeper that must have been related with mrs.Danvers (Leighton)> The action takes place in the Australia of the 1830s. 
The Film ,Hitchcock's last costume drama, filmed in England with a fine cast, received,deservedly,some of the worst notices of his career and it was a catastophe at the box-office. The two lead actors were miscasts and the film was talkative, and the long takes that Hitchcock used again (as in Rope) were here clumsy and intrusive. Hitchcock saw himself as the famous Hollywood director and producer returning home in triumph and delivering to a grateful world a masterpiece, but the film had none of the elements of the style of film the audiences expected from him, and they stayed away in droves! 
Stage Fright (1950) Screenplay: Alma Hitchcock, James Bridie from the novel " Man running" by Selwyn Jepson.
CAST: Richard Todd, Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Alistair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Miles Malleson, Andre Morell, Patricia Hitchcock 
PLOT:
Jonathan Cooper (Todd) tells his girlfriend Eve (Wyman) that the well known actress Charlotte Inwood (Dietrich) came to his flat in a state of shock,confessing she had killed her husband and begging him to destroy her incriminating blood-stained dress. He was seen leaving the actress' house and now he is suspected of murder.
He stays with Eve's father (Sim) while Eve enrols as Charlotte's maid in order to spy on her. At the film's conclusion, Cooper is trapped in an empty theater and it is revealed that he killed Charlotte's husband in order to marry her. 
Richard Todd, Alastair Sim, Jane Wyman 
Marlene Dietrich,ineffably glamorous,(above) The washed-up party (below), two of the best things in Stage Fright, indisputably a minor Hitchcock's work. 
Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman |