Notorious (1946)

Ingrid Bergman, who had already starred in Hitchcock's film of the previous year, Spellbound (both scripted by Ben Hecht), plays Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy. She takes to drink and men but when approached by a government agent, T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to catch some Nazis now based in South America where they have fled after the Allied victory,  She, of course, does the right thing, albeit more out of attraction for Devlin, so restoring her sense of worth by bringing down a villainous friend, Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), of her father and his evil Third Reich masters. But to do so she must marry Sebastian and Devlin who has fallen in love with her is conflicted by his sense of duty to Uncle Sam, his disapproval of Alicia's promiscuity and his attraction to her. 

Based on an original idea by Hitchcock it is stylishly directed by him and impressively photographed in noir-ish black and white by Ted Tetzlaff. It's one of the best of Hitchcock's '40s films with, for him, an unusually high quotient of sexual content.

 

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