A Movie As Well-Made As The Passionate Friends Has Got A Friend In Me

To quote Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (which itself was quoting a passage from the book The Natural History of Nonsense): "We might be through with the past but the past ain't through with us." That's true under any circumstances but it's especially true in regards to the lead characters of The Passionate Friends, who are all entangled in how Mary (Ann Todd) is becoming heavily infatuated with a figure from her past much to the detriment of her present circumstances. Even when seemingly important people and events fade into the best, they can still manage to be impactful well into the present.

Mo' Thrills Lead To Mo' Problems In Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

There's a reason Alfred Hitchcock's become known as "The Master of Suspense" but it'd be disingenuous to believe that he only worked on horror fare like Psycho and The Birds in his career. Just as John Ford didn't just do Westerns or Martin Scorsese hasn't done solely gangster movies, Hitchcock also had more variety in terms of the genres he explored than one might expect. For instance, he was very well-versed in the world of spy thrillers, most notably in his movies like North By Northwest and the subject of this review, Notorious, a 1946 feature film that paired the director with a trio of legendary 1940's actors; Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains!