Cast and Crew:   Alfred Hitchcock (Director); Ben Hecht (Writer); Clifford Odets (Dialogue)

What It’s About:  Intelligence operative Devlin (Cary Grant) grooms Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the disgraced daughter of a German American convicted of treason, as a spy on Nazis operating out of Rio De Janeiro.

Why Watch it Today?:  Claude Rains, who is excellent here as the German businessman that Devlin wants Alicia to get close to, died today in 1967.  Although he occasionally was the lead (The Invisible Man, for example), Rains excelled in parts where he played villains (The Seahawk) and in supporting roles (such as Larry Talbot’s father Sir John in The Wolf Man and Inspector Renault in Casablanca).  Although Notorious is most famous for its dreamy leads, where would it be without Rains’ mother-dominated creep?  If I were an actor, and I were to have worked during Hollywood’s Golden Age, I should like to have been like Claude.