Plot
Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate an organization of Nazis who have relocated to Brazil after World War II.
While awaiting the details of her assignment in Rio de Janeiro Alicia and Devlin fall in love, though his feelings are complicated by his knowledge of her wild past. When Devlin gets instructions to persuade her to seduce Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of her father's friends and a leading member of the group, Devlin tries to convince his superiors that Alicia is not fit for the job, without success. He puts up a stoic front when he informs Alicia about the mission, choosing duty over love. Alicia concludes that he was merely pretending to love her as part of his job.
They contrive to have her meet Sebastian, and renew their acquaintance. At a dinner Alicia witnesses an odd incident—a guest becomes hysterical at the sight of several wine bottles on a sideboard, and is ushered quickly from the room.
Sebastian quickly renews his ardor for her, and soon Alicia reports to Devlin, "you can add Sebastian's name to my list of playmates." When Sebastian proposes, Alicia informs Devlin, hoping he will finally erupt, but the agent coldly tells her to do whatever she wants; stung, she marries Sebastian.
When she returns from her honeymoon, Alicia is hard-pressed to find anything amiss in her new home. The only thing she can relate to Devlin is that the key ring her husband gave her is short a key, the one to the wine cellar. That, and the bottle episode at the dinner, lead Devlin to urge Alicia to hold a grand party so he might investigate. The night of the affair, Alicia secretly steals the key from Sebastian's ring, and the two slip away to the cellar. There, Devlin accidentally breaks a bottle. Inside they find not wine, but a black sand (which later analysis shows to be uranium). He takes a sample, cleans up, and locks the door just as Sebastian comes down for more champagne. Alicia and Devlin kiss to cover their tracks. Devlin feigns drunkenness, and makes an exit, but Sebastian remains suspicious. When he comes back later, he finds the glass and sand from the broken bottle pushed under a wine rack.
Now Sebastian has a problem: he must silence Alicia, but cannot expose her without revealing his own blunder to his unforgiving fellow Nazis. He discusses the situation with his mother (Leopoldine Konstantin) and she suggests that Alicia "die slowly" by poisoning. They poison her coffee and she quickly falls ill; soon she is bedridden.
Devlin becomes alarmed when she fails to appear at their next rendezvous. He sneaks into Alicia's quarters, where she tells him that Sebastian and his mother are poisoning her. After confessing his love for her, Devlin carries her out of the mansion in full view of Sebastian's Nazi cabal. Sebastian begs to go with them, but Devlin and Alicia drive away, leaving Sebastian to face his Nazi cohorts.
Read more about this topic: Notorious (1946 film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)