Notorious -Hitchcock Notes

“I guess a woman can’t change her stripes” – Carrie Grant says this when their at a café..
• shows she’s not political (apolical), loose, independent
• stripes=like a predator – similar to Mrs. Robinson o flirty, sexy, loose woman
• turning stripes to no stripes – hair down flowing, so she can be marriageable
Loose
• I’m a Nazi due to my father’s ideology and I’m a marked criminal, I might as well play that role.
• We find out initially that this is all not true, doesn’t agree w/ father’s ideology
• Because of sins of her father she is picked for espionage job.
Her vision construed
• Drunk driving scene
• Again another example: When HER life is in danger, she can’t see… but when the woman is working for another party in dangerous situations, she can see clearly.
• Women can’t save themselves
Justification of domestic abuse
• How times have changed: he clocks her to take over drunk driving
• Oh he was doing it for my own good
• A case where we cross over our own ethical boundaries and like him
• Granted he is sadistic throughout film and we ? his behavior but we still want them to get together at end of the film
• She’s our main character
• Think about what you’re willing to accept because it’s Carrie Grant (good looking or movie star)
• So out of sync to today’s society – not socially acceptable today o Yet this exists in today’s society, it’s just hidden now – how society works to repress…
Camera literally turning into spiral
• Chaos
• He’s dominating
• Is this shot a commentary on the public or private? o Could represent his role in her life, he’s about to turn her upside down bc she falls in love with him o Shot=precursor to her world upside down
• Public AND private o Because of him, EVERYTHING gets turned upside down, her personal life and public (he doesn’t stand up for her and this makes her go to do this espionage job)
• Sight=essential to the film o Hung-over vision distorted here o We’re in her subj pov twice now – see it clearly or distorted?
• Car drunk driving AND now in bed hung-over
• Private= she can’t save herself
• Public = agency of her vision delineates whether she’s in public ro private sphere.