analysis of the final scenes of alfred hitchcock

Analysis of the Final Scenes of Alfred Hitchcock's 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.