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 This is "one of the best Hitchcock suspense films of all time". It was
nominated for two Acadamy Awards in 1947, one of which was Best Original
Screenplay. They tell us that this was one of the all time box office champs
and that the The Daily News gave it four stars. Ingrid Bergman is the daughter of a Nazi spy. Cary Grant
is a secret agent who gets her to work for the U.S. and insinuates herself in
the life of a "Nazi mastermind". Grant and Bergman's characters fall in love
and complications ensue. 1946, 103 minutes, VHS
First of all, this movie has nothing to do with the Loverboy song of the same
name, so if you're fans of the Canadian supergroup, shove off. This is actually
a 1947 Alfred Hitchock movie that stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Bergman
is the daughter of some hotshot nazi spy who gets tagged for treason. Grant is
a mysterious stranger named Devlin (of course he is!) who turns out to be some
type of intelligence officer. He meets Bergman at a party and they bicker back
and forth while she's drunk driving and then he convinces her to move to South
America to marry a scuzzy nazi spy to help out the good ole U.S. of A and they
fall in love and blah and blah and blah. Okay, I knew I was in trouble from the
opening shot on this one. Any movie that starts out with a shot of a Federal
Circuit Court Room and then follows that up with a riveting sequence involving
a sentencing hearing and I immediately begin to wonder if I accidently switched
on Court TV. But I stuck with it to avoid any claims of a "rush to judgment".  After the monumentally boring beginning, the movie quickly shifts into high
gear for the monumentally boring middle. This is where the plan is hatched to
turn Bergman into some sort of sullen Mati Hari. See, she has to marry this
nazi spy in order to uncover some type of operation or to keep tabs on him or
to expose the ring of nazis he hangs out with or something. I probably missed
some vital plot point during a monumental yawn. This icky nazi she has to marry
is played by Claude Rains. You may remember not seeing him star in The Invisible Man (get it?). Claude also has a very annoying co-star: his toupee. This thing is
sort of just perched on his head and made me think of wavy brown moss.
Everytime he was on screen I wanted to tell him that he wasn't fooling anyone
with that budget weave. He was pretty stupid as toupeed nazi masterminds go.
Earlier in the movie, Bergman had spurned his advances, no doubt that toupee
played a pretty big part in that, and then she suddenly was all like "hey,
let's get married and what do you have hidden in the locked wine cellar". And
he bought it! What was a little creepy though was that Sy Sperling's mom lived
with him and she kept all over his back about Bergman. It was almost like a
glimpse of Psycho the way this guy's mother dominated him. Why didn't she tell him about the
toupee? But she's a cunning little mother and bides her time when her son will
not listen to her about Bergman's spying activities. So she's married to this guy but her heart belongs to Cary Grant (natch!). She
and her nazi husband host a party and Cary shows up and it's the perfect time
to conduct a little search of someone's wine cellar. Cary and Ingrid go
downstairs and search around for clues like they were Freddie and Velma from Scooby-Doo and then Grant accidentally knocks down a wine bottle. But when it breaks,
powder flows from it instead of wine. "Egads!" Grant says, "it's uranium ore!"
I was thinking, "somebody has to stop them! These madmen are trying to poison
wine drinkers with uranium ore!" Grant took a sample and shoved the rest of the
stuff under the shelf. Then they boogie. Well, nazi mastermind figures out that
they know (he is a mastermind!) and his mother immediately suggests helpfully
that they slowly poison Bergman. I immediately checked my tea as I felt as I
had been poisoned for about the last 90 minutes. So they poison her.  The problem with this movie is that there never is any sense of jeopardy or
mystery. As a Hitchcock directed picture, I thought that there would be some
suspense or some strange twist that would make this more interesting than the
story suggested. I kept waiting for something of interest to happen, but
nothing ever did. The dude with the bad toupee wasn't threatening. He just
seemed like a love struck loser. Cary Grant's character didn't seem to have
much to do, but stand around expressionless to show he was a hardened spy who
wouldn't let his emotions interfere with his job. Of course, he did end up let
his emotions do that, but that's true love right? What was the point of this
movie? Why is this considered a classic? Grant collects a little powder,
Bergman almost gets poisoned (how very thrilling - oh my god! She's going to
sip her drink again! Noooooo!), and then we have the lamest climax in many a
moon. How does the film end? Grant goes to the nazi's house and helps her down
the stairs, because she's too poisoned to walk under her own power. Then he
puts her into the car and the movie ends. Wow! The big walking down the stairs
ending. What drama! Only three more stairs! Come on Cary, you can do it! Yes!
Now just walk out the door. Yes! And into the car. Whew! Made your heart race
I'll wager. I would say that Grant is the only saving grace in this film. His easy
coolness always is a pleasure to watch even when its in bland fare such as Mr. Lucky or debacles like Once Upon A Honeymoon . Bergman was big disappointment in this one. Her performance had no spark and
was very detached even when she was supposed to be all hot and heavy with
Grant. And Claude Rains, what can we say about Rains, a man who starred in so
many classics in the 30s and 40s. What can we say indeed? Um, well he was in a
lot of movies that were good - and with better toupees.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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