an alaysis of the final scenes of alfred hictcocks notorious

After viewing Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious for the first time, the film
did not strike me as particularly complex. Nothing specific about the film
lodged itself in my brain screaming for an answer-or, at least, an
attempted answer. Yet, upon subsequent viewings, subtle things became
more noticeable. (Perhaps Hitchcock's subtlety is what makes him so
enormously popular!) Hitchcock uses motifs and objects, shot styles and
shifting points of view, and light and dark to help explain the relationships
between Alicia, Devlin, Sebastian and Mrs. Sebastian, and an overall
theme of being trapped. An analysis of the film from the first poisoning
scene to the final scene in the film shows how the above tools lead to a
better understanding of the character's motivations. The most obvious
recurring object in the final scenes is the poisoned coffee cup. In the first
scene of the portion being analyzed, Sebastian suggests to Alicia that
she drink her coffee, and Hitchcock zooms onto the object as she slowly
takes a sip. In a later scene, Mrs. Sebastian pours the coffee into the cup
for Alicia, and sets it on a small table in front of her. Here, Hitchcock not
only zooms in on the small
teacup, but heightens the sound it makes connecting
to the table, includes it in every shot possible, and shows us not only the
full coffee cup, but the empty cup as well after Alicia has drank it. Again,
the cup is zoomed in on after Alicia realizes she's being poisoned.
Because the coffee is poisoned, the coffee itself becomes a metaphor for
life and death, supported by the fact that the poisoner herself ours it, and
the shots of the full and empty teacup. In this way, it also suggests
Alicia's inability to escape her situation-whenever she drinks the coffee,
she becomes trapped due to the poison in her cup-and the poison in her
sham of a marriage A repeated object not so noticeable is Mrs.
Sebastian's needlework. Mrs. Sebastian is constantly working on her
needlepoint while Alicia is being poisoned. Hitchcock, in fact, goes out of
his way to make sure that a shot of her 'toiling at her work' is included
several times. One cannot help but be reminded of Dickens classic A

Tale of Two Cities-with Madame Defarge knitting everyone's fate into her
work. At the beginning of the film, Devlin hands Alicia a handkerchief,
and a scarf, which she keeps, but returns to him in this segment. These
pieces of cloth
throughout the film help tie Alicia to the different characters, and in
essence, help control her fate in different situations. Hitchcock's use of
shot type is another hint into his character's personalities. Hitchcock is
very fond of medium and close-up shots, and rarely uses a longer shot in
the film. This may suggest to the audience to keep a closer eye on the
character's facial expressions, as Hitchcock lets the actors express their
thoughts and feelings in this manner. An excellent example of this would
be when Alicia realizes that she is being poisoned-Hitchcock zooms in on
her wide-eyed expression as she first looks at the teacup, then at Mrs.
Sebastian and her husband. Mrs. Sebastian's cold hearted stare back at
Alicia tells us exactly just how much hatred she has for her. Hitchcock
also uses devices in his scenes such as fades from shot to shot. By
doing this, Hitchcock illustrates his character's different viewpoints. The
fades themselves are used to connect Alicia's two different worlds-her
'fake' world (her marriage to Sebastian), and her 'real' world (her
relationship with Devlin). For example, when Alicia is
unable to make contact with
Devlin due to her illness, there are several shots of her in her sick bed,
then fading to Devlin waiting impatiently at a bench. The fading between
shots usually comes at a point when Alicia is feeling trapped, and this
suggests that the fades represent her desire to escape back to her 'real'
world. Since, obviously, it is difficult to use colour as a nuance in a black
and white film, Hitchcock makes use of light and dark images. When
Alicia and Sebastian are alone together, it is usually in darkness implying
safety in hiding, and also implying a different world. Alicia is safe and
free to do what she wants in the darkness, as she is with Devlin, and can

easily hide within it. For Sebastian, it is the opposite, for to him, Alicia's
darkness is a world that he cannot enter, although he tries. An example
of this is seen when Alicia meets her commander, and asks him to shut
the blinds in the room because the light bothers her. Also, when Devlin
rescues Alicia, he walks into her dark bedroom and makes her walk out
into the lighted hallway. Sebastian walks up the staircase to meet them,
and goes out into the night, where he is rejected from the dark
car as Alicia and
Devlin pull away. Ironically, this is reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet,
where Romeo rescues Juliet from an unwanted marriage to Paris, and
where things seem to go wrong for the two star crossed lovers only in the
daylight. The final scene, when Sebastian slowly walks up the stairs to
his death, he walks into the light of the house (like walking into the light of
heaven), then all becomes dark as the door (St. Peter's gates?) closes
behind him. Again, ironically, it is only then that Sebastian can reach
Alicia's 'dark world'-through death. The costumes that the
characters wear is also a clue. Both Mrs. Sebastian and Alicia are
trapped in their worlds, and when they are both feeling trapped, they wear
dark colours. For instance, when Alicia realizes she is being poisoned,
she attempts an escape, and fails-while wearing a black dress. When
Mrs. Sebastian walks down the staircase behind Alicia and Devlin in the
final few scenes, she knows she is trapped, and is wearing a dark dress.
However, whenever the two characters feel free or released from their
trappings, they wear light colours-as when Alicia is poisoned, Mrs.
Sebastian is wearing white, and when Alicia makes her escape, she is
wearing a white nightslip. Since the two characters are
enemies, and in opposite
worlds, usually when one is wearing light colours, the other is in dark
colours. Hitchcock's use of shadows also help us understand
character motivations. The most obvious example is when Alicia realizes

she's been poisoned, and begins blacking out. She looks at Sebastian
and his mother, and the lighting in the room becomes opposite to what it
previously was, lighting up the window behind them, and throwing
Sebastian and his mother into shadow. The two characters become
shadows themselves. Again, when Alicia staggers to the door of the
room, the two shadows of Sebastian and his mother on the door merge to
her blurry vision. In this shot, the audience gets a sense that Sebastian
and Mrs. Sebastian have become the same person-essentially, they are,
as they are united in their common goal of keeping her political
preference a secret.Through nuances such as repeated objects, shot
types and light and dark, Hitchcock is able to help the audience better
understand Alicia, Sebastian, Mrs. Sebastian and Devlin's personalities
and motivations
towards one another. What I found extremely compelling is the
fact that, unlike Scorsese's After Hours, the motifs throughout this film
weren't immediately apparent, at least to me, unless Hitchcock wanted
them to be. Although Hitchcock is probably known better for weird and
wonderful films like Vertigo and Psycho, his subtlty is what makes him a
master.