Notoriously Human: Alicia and the "Strongfemalecharacter"

    The further I dive into classical Hollywood, the more taken I am by all its fascinating contradictions. 

    This wasn't, I'll acknowledge, a period in American history which we think of as being kind toward women or recognizing their autonomy. 

The Mark of Zorro (1920)

        I think the collective point of reference most people have for women in old movies is the sort of hero's trophy who waits around for the guy to swoop in and carry her out of the mess she has made for herself, and that image has some basis in how Hollywood itself behaved. But film history covers a lot more than just that one type. 

             The Hays Code prohibited illicit sexual material on film, among other things, and was in effect until the early 1960s. Because sexual content was greatly monitored and regulated, female characters weren’t really objectified--at least not in the way we'd understand it today. (And it's not like life behind-the camera was super nice to women either, see: the Judy Garland essay.)

    Owing to this in part, popular discourse sometimes forgets what a repository early Hollywood was for complex, rounded female characters. In some ways, old Hollywood's attitudes on what we would today call feminism put modern Hollywood to shame. This was the age of Scarlett O’Hara, Mary-Kate Danaher, Hildy Johnson, Holly Golightly, Dorothy Gale, and perhaps the best of the bunch, Alicia Huberman of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 masterpiece, Notorious.

         The film sees Ingrid Bergman playing Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a Nazi traitor, who is caught in the media hailstorm after her father is exposed and convicted. Alicia gets her chance to clear her reputation when handsome government agent Devlin (played by Cary Grant) offers her the chance to perform a valuable service for her country. But her task, seducing a Nazi leader (played by Claude Rains), demands that she step into the very role she’s running from. Alicia is in effect a character given no ownership over her own identity. But through her own resilience and strength of character, she asserts that her identity is in her own hands, not the hands of the men in her life.

    I came into this project with a deep love for the film and for the character of Alicia. I consider it to be my favorite Alfred Hitchcock film and Alicia to be one of my favorite film characters. But because this film predates a lot of modern sensibilities about representing female characters, I was prepared to use this as a sort of time-capsule piece, a survey of how to still appreciate something that might not have "aged well," but been boundary-pushing for its time.

    Imagine my frustration when it turned out everyone else loved Alicia as much as I did.

Angelica Jade Bastién writes for the Criterion Collection,

“[Alicia] is neither projection nor perfectly perfumed fantasy. The men who seek to determine her fate use her body as a weapon, believing her to be a femme fatale. But the film never loses sight of the fact that Alicia’s truths are more complicated. From this angle, Notorious becomes a consideration of what happens when a woman’s sexual history frames the totality of her identity.”

Janet Maslin wrote for The New York Times in 1980,

“One of the more remarkable things about Notorious is that it hasn't seemed to age; if anything, it grows more timely. The climate that made a ‘notorious’ woman out of Alicia because of her drinking and apparent promiscuity is more permissive these days . . . but Alicia's recklessness helps make her seem a more modern, believable character than many strait-laced movie heroines of the same era.”

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

    Hollywood has for years had this obsession with this notion of the "strong female character," and it has made some pretty desperate attempts to craft her into this thing that can be used as a figurehead for a light and easy brand of feminism. But these attempts often align less with an intricate appreciation for human psychology and more with the demands of a confused and turbulent market. And with some exceptions, I don't think the majority of these efforts will age well.

    And so my attention falls back to characters like Alicia Huberman, one of the greatest characters in all of film history, and today we're going to talk about why.

    Alicia is an interesting player among female characters as a whole but also Hitchcock characters specifically, so I want to contextualize her among his other leading ladies. This will help set the stage for our look on the other participants in this film, both Alicia herself and the men who pursue her. Then I want to wrap up by answering whether Alicia fits into that most condemning of all classes--the damsel in distress.

               

Brief Refresher

         The first time we see Alicia Huberman is at her father’s trial, wherein he receives a life sentence for his work for the Nazis. Alicia herself was never involved in their work, but she still inherits the shame of her father’s transgressions. Between this and her reputation for drunken, sloven behavior (in original drafts she was in fact a prostitute), Alicia is a marked woman.

     Enter government agent T.R. Devlin, who offers Alicia the opportunity to wipe her slate clean by enlisting in a critical government mission in Rio de Janeiro, one which will help put an end to the activities of the remaining Nazis. Alicia accepts the assignment and flies to Rio with Devlin.

    As they wait for the details of her mission to take shape, Alicia starts to reveal aspects of herself to Devlin that the paparazzi left out of the headlines. Turns out this notorious woman has a heart and a mind. Maybe there’s more to her than illicit affairs and drunken nights. Alicia and Devlin grow close, and are carried away in a sweeping romance. Then they receive Alicia’s assignment: Alicia needs to seek out one of her father’s Nazi compatriots, an old flame of hers named Alex Sebastian, and spy on him to learn what the Nazis are plotting. And how else is she to obtain this information than by seducing him? And could Devlin and Alicia's romance survive this charade?

    Early film showed a great deal of interest in the suffering of women. They made for sympathetic focal points through which we could all reflect on what a cruel, cruel world we live in, such that the most innocent among us were so unfairly put upon. Federico Fellini's 1954 film, La Strada, followed a timid young woman who is roped into being the assistant to a cruel travelling circus performer. He is brutish and demeaning toward her, and our hearts are with her as she consistently endures his emotional abuse. That's the kind of film that prolific filmmakers would produce and the kind The Academy would award Best Foreign Film.

    But part of what makes Notorious somewhat unique for old Hollywood is that Alicia isn't an innocent little china doll experiencing hard things for the first time. She is a woman with a history. Moreover, she isn't just a figurehead whose situation we lament from a safe distance. Alicia's interior world is brought to life in great cinematic detail.

    See, a lot of Hitch's movies, especially his most iconic movies, tend to hinge on elaborate plot gymnastics or gripping "what ifs" that twist your brain (e.g. what if someone you randomly met on a train tried to implicate you in a murder?). They were very-plot driven. Notorious, meanwhile, is one of his most character-driven films. While I'd call something like Strangers on a Train a very well-written piece, Notorious is one of those movies where the bulk of the film is propelled by the conversations of the characters and the things they are revealing about themselves. In this case, the character doing the most revealing is a woman put in an impossible position. 

    Having a character-centric story isn't as easy as just dropping little backstory tidbits. We need to be seeing how these characters respond in a situation. And moreover, we need to be recognizing ourselves in these moments. One of the most central conversations in the film, for example, has Alicia and Devlin talking at a racetrack. They are in this position so that they can relay essential intel, but the scene gets its punch from seeing these two, especially Alicia, reckon with what this all means for their relationship. We see closeups of her tears as she is burned by Devlin's snideness. This entire cinematic vessel provides an opportunity to not just behold the trials of this woman, but to experience them alongside her.

   For further context, 1940s was also the day of the femme fatale character that populated noir films. The femme fatale was always this beguiling woman who teased the possibility of sexual reverie for the man lucky enough to win her--generally the protagonist of these kinds of films. But loving her always came at a cost. Giving into temptation left the protagonist vulnerable and often led to his downfall. The femme fatale was ultimately a stand-in for the danger men faced when they indulged in sexual proclivity.

    Arguably the most famous of these was the title character in Gilda, released the same year as Notorious, starring Rita Hayworth. I bring this film up because it is one of those rare noir films where the protagonist is allowed to reach something like a happy union with the femme fatale, but this is following an entire film hyping her up as this ultimate sexual fantasy. It's also further worth noting that one another man has to die after being caught in her spiderweb for them to get together.

    Characters like these left a complicated legacy. They represented some of those fleeting positions of power that women onscreen were allowed to inhabit in classic Hollywood, and there was a twisted sense of justice in the way used man's own sexual appetites to orchestrate their downfall. At the same time, you again see a woman's sexuality being framed as the totality of her identity.

But this is just another way that Alicia stands out. Even during the heyday of the femme fatale, you saw the cinematic factory that built her questioning the society that punished her. One way of describing the premise of Notorious is saying that it's the film that puts the femme fatale in the position of protagonist. It forces you to ask what it would feel like to have even the man you love and the country you serve see you as this alluring siren who ultimately spelled doom for anyone who got close to you.

    This is the impossible scenario in which Alicia is pigeonholed: the only way she can wash herself of her sins is by becoming the very woman everyone says she is. She’s laying her dignity aside in order to help her country, but no one sees it that way, least of all the man she loves.

 

Notorious Women

         The way Hitchcock portrayed women has been the subject of much critical discourse since the dawn of critical discourse. Laura Mulvey’s famous essay on “the male gaze,” one of the most foundational texts of film feminist dialogue, is anchored largely on Kim Novak’s character in Vertigo and Grace Kelly's character Rear Window. No one can really agree whether or not Hitchcock’s films were “feminist,” but everyone knows they are essential talking points within the conversation.

         Hitch has a reputation for subjecting his leading ladies to these intense ordeals of fire. Hitch is especially famous for his casting of icy-blondes, including Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly, and of course Ingrid Bergman, in roles that walk the fine line between conforming and subversive. Women in his films are at once exotified and humanized. Hitch frames his women as paintings for his audience to behold while also shaming audiences for beholding them like paintings.

    His 1958 film, Vertigo, features a former police officer “Scottie,” played by James Stewart, assigned to tail the wife of his former colleague, Madelaine, played by Kim Novak. Scottie is assigned to watch her every mysterious move in an effort to understand her. Madelaine is hauntingly beautiful, and Scottie’s pursuit of her inevitably leads to romantic involvement with her which leads to an obsession which leads to psychological freefall which leads to ... if you’ve seen it you know.

    The film indulges the male viewer in a voyeuristic fantasy in which this goddess of sexual allure begs the male viewer to discover her secrets, but it also reveals the façade behind the fantasy and the distress it wreaks upon the subject of such a fantasy. The question lingers, is Madeleine being objectified so much that she reveals the snares by which all womenkind are bound by the lecherous and possessive gazes of the men who hold power over them, or ... is she just being objectified?

    Another character we should bring up is Melanie Daniels, the protagonist of his 1963 film, The Birds, played by Tippi Hedren. In her youth, Melanie was a loose cannon of a person and got herself involved in a lot of highly publicized scandals, and she is still marred by the scandals of her youthful escapades. The film sees her trying to prove her maturity to a skeptical (and attractive) lawyer, Mitch Brenner, played by Rod Taylor. But Melanie’s arrival into his life occurs in tandem with flocks of birds attacking the townsfolk in orchestrated waves of violence. Through Melanie, mother nature herself appears to be punishing the prodigal daughter.

         Already we can see that Alicia is a common ancestor for Madelaine and Melanie. The men in Alicia’s life define her by her sexual allure, just like they do with Madelaine. And like Melanie, Alicia’s arc is one giant penance walk for sins she wasn't really committing. Women in Hitchcock’s films are often tortured individuals, dodging double-standards or suffocating under the predatory eyes of the men in their life. Where is the line between representing vs enabling objectification? We've been debating that for years.

    Hitchcock's own off-camera behavior is also relevant here. In 2017, actress Tippi Hedren disclosed her own experiences with Hitchcock pursuing her during the making of her two films with him and subsequently sabotaging her career after she did not accept his advances. Knowing this, Hitchcock’s studies of male predation start to read like personal confessions.

    Just so, leading ladies of these films are undeniably complex characters. Even when they aren’t the protagonists in their respective films, Hitchcock’s leading ladies demonstrate a range of intelligence and autonomy that surpasses the likes of, say, your usual Michael Bay love-interest. Some of the richest female characters from classical cinema came from Hitchcock, and this is clearer nowhere than with Alicia.

Alicia Huberman, a Woman of That Sort

    The first time we hear Alicia speak is at a party at her house following her father’s trial. Far from shame or grief, her persona is one of gaiety. “The important drinking hasn’t started yet,” she proclaims to her guests. (Alicia will later confide in Devlin that it was learning about her father’s work with the Nazis that drove her to the bottle in the first place.)

    We soon come to see, though, that this persona is a mask. Upon receiving the call to serve her country, Alicia insists to Devlin that she cares nothing for America. But Devlin plays a secret recording taped before her father's arrest, wherein we hear Alicia declare her loyalty to America and her repulsion toward for father's work, which outs her as a patriot.

    So, the movie shows us like three or four different faces for Alicia in like the first fifteen minutes before the plot has really set in motion. We see her looking beaten and sheepish as she crawls out the courtroom after her father is sentenced, we see her looking merry as she's entertaining guests, we see her all sloppy and disheveled after she's drunk, we see her full of fury and indignation after she finds out Devlin is a cop, and we see something a lot like heroism when Devlin plays the recording and we hear Alicia affirming her allegiance to her country. So, we're allowed to see Alicia expressing a full color palette of emotions, understanding that each of them somehow represents a valid part of herself.

    It is perhaps also worth commenting on that Alicia's plight does broadly mirror Bergman's own situation. Bergman was born in Sweden and began her acting career working as an extra in early Swedish cinema before making the jump to Hollywood at the close of the 1930s. Though she was not American born, like Alicia, she ratified her place in this country through her actions, landing in the history books as one of the defining faces of early cinema--perhaps her most iconic role coming in 1942's Casablanca.

Stromboli (1950)

    Then about four years after her turn as Alicia Huberman, Bergman herself was hit with controversy when news of her affair with director Roberto Rossellini soiled her reputation with American audiences. She was typed as this wicked seductress or, in the words of U.S. Senator Edwin C Johnson, “a powerful influence for evil.” (Be Kind Rewind gives in-depth coverage of the scandal on her YouTube channel.) As the Criterion Collection said of Alicia, Bergman’s transgressions suddenly framed the totality of her identity. Bergman later commented on the matter, saying, "People saw me in Joan of Arc, and declared me a saint. I'm not. I'm just a woman, another human being."

   And the film tracks what it's like to be forced to walk in this twilight zone. The real punch is that Alicia's lover, the man who should be her final advocate, Devlin, does not have faith in her. Devlin reasons that if Alicia were truly a changed woman--if she truly loved him--she would never have accepted the assignment, let alone accomplish it so masterfully.

    The film almost makes a spectacle out of Alicia’s humiliation, bringing us back to the question of representation versus exploitation, but our sympathies lie unquestionably with Alicia through this ordeal. When Devlin continually shames her for being thrown into an impossible situation, we see her tears. And moreover, the film grants her the opportunities to dispel the lies assigned to her.

    Let’s take stock of what assets Alicia possesses according to the government that enlisted her services: She is well connected socially due to her father’s work within Nazi circles. She is sexually alluring. As mission leader Paul Prescott says of her “She’s good at making ‘friends’ with gentlemen.”

Let’s now take stock of the assets Alicia demonstrates herself while on the assignment: She can maintain her composure under pressure, averting detection with nothing but her wits even as circumstances change. She is keen and observant and sees things others don’t want her to see. Not only does she ascertain that the secret is in the wine bottles in the cellar, she cleverly manages to steal away the keys to break into her own house. Most importantly, she is committed to get the job done, no matter the personal cost to her, and that can only be described as bravery. This is where the film reveals Alicia’s characters strengths: she is good at her job, and not just because Sebastian has the hots for her, but because she is intelligent and determined. Alicia’s trial by fire becomes the light by which her nobility and virtue are revealed, and there's something very forward thinking about putting audiences in the position to reckon with these realities.

Is there room for improvement? I suppose. Had the film been made today, there would be more incentive to surround a complex female character like Alicia with more complex female characters, other women to support her. As is, the only other significant female character in the movie is Alex’s mother--who is very much an antagonist. As such, the movie largely remains a document of one woman’s worth as viewed by the men in her life, and I think it’s fair to expect more from modern films. That said, I also think it can be a little too easy to paint over the film's victories just because it cannot cover every single base of feminism in 100 minutes of runtime. Even the fact that Alicia herself is made to tread water in this male-dominated sphere ends up saying something about the world in which women have to keep their heads up. The men in the film display animosity toward Alicia through their snide comments toward her, but the film refutes this animosity by exposing the errors in their matrix.

Devlin and Sebastian

         While we’re here, let’s also talk about the other two points in this love triangle.

    The central tension runs in Alicia's relationship with Devlin and his unchecked insecurities. Devlin’s lingering misogyny have him verbally punish Alicia for her work in the mission through a lot of passive-aggressive remarks about her enthusiasm for the assignment. But we also catch onto the dissonance within him. Devlin only exhibits this disdain toward Alicia when he is with her. There’s one moment where he sarcastically takes a snap at his superiors when they question her integrity. The exchange plays out:

Beardsley: Oh, I don't think any of us have any illusions about her character. Have we, Devlin?

Devlin: Not at all, not in the slightest. Miss Huberman is first, last, and always not a lady. She may be risking her life, but when it comes to being a lady, she doesn't hold a candle to your wife, sitting in Washington, playing bridge with three other ladies of great honor and virtue.

         Devlin seems to recognize that Alicia’s participation in this mission only reveals her nobility, he’s just caught in the trap of his own pride.

    The film is walking a fine line with Devlin and his treatment of Alicia, but I also think a key part of this conversation about female representation is the honest representation of male entitlement. Displaying that, and also allowing the male lead to move past that, puts the male viewer in a position to reckon with how this sort of thing can manifest even in "nice guys" while also setting an expectation that they put forth the necessary work to move past that. 

    Something I’ve always found interesting is how eager many critics are to cast Sebastian in a sympathetic light. Hitchcock himself even says that Sebastian’s love for Alicia is in many ways truer than Devlin’s. And there is something inherently twisted about his situation that makes him oddly sympathetic. (As sympathetic as Nazis go, at least.) He finds out his marriage has all been a performance. Not only does she not love him, she has been using him.

    In the wake of his discovery, however, Sebastian’s first impulse is one of wrath, such that he fantasizes about strangling her in her sleep. It's also not like Sebastian ever considers leaving the Nazis for Alicia. (He also shows himself to be possessive of Alicia very early on, like when he manipulates Alicia into having sex him with in order to “convince him” that Devlin means nothing to her.) He demonstrates the same mistrust of Alicia that makes Devlin so frustrating, but Devlin grows to see the error of his ways. Sebastian doesn't.

    Both Devlin and Sebastian display possessive behavior over Alicia, and while they both may have loved her, only Devlin ever grows past his selfish tendencies. Devlin then proves himself worthy of her love and is allowed to live while Sebastian meets a dark end. In this way, the film holds men accountable for their crimes against women. Tania Modleski writes in her book “The Women Who Knew Too Much: Alfred Hitchcock and Feminist Film Theory,”

“If Notorious suggests the importance of recognizing male masochism, it equally demonstrates the ease with which this masochism may be repudiated, and, most importantly, it reveals the potentially dire consequences for women of this repudiation.”

Is Alicia a Damsel in Distress?

    The story continues for a bit after Alicia and Devlin figure out what it is the Nazis were up to anyways. Alicia's already functionally completed her assignment by this point. This last little bit is just carried exclusively by the possibility of Alicia being saved--and of her and Devlin possibly reconciling.

    See, a slip-up at a party causes Sebastian to discover that Alicia is an American agent. When he confides in his mother, they concoct a scheme to gradually poison Alicia before the other Nazis learn that Sebastian has been leaking information through her.

    By the time Alicia realizes what they are doing to her, she’s too deteriorated to escape on her own. Meanwhile Devlin grows disturbed at Alicia’s absence, and so he takes matters into his own hands and breaks into Sebastian’s house to find her.

    Sneaking into Alicia’s room, Devlin discovers Alicia clinging desperately to life, and Devlin repents of having ever doubted her character. Devlin carries Alicia out of the room and right into the path of Sebastian and his Nazi compatriots. Devlin dares Sebastian to reveal why he’s there to his comrades, knowing full well that the truth would expose Sebastian as well. Sebastian permits Devlin to take Alicia, telling his fellow Nazis that Alicia has fallen ill inexplicably and Devlin is taking her to the hospital. His comrades see through Sebastian’s deception, and he surrenders to their grasp as Devlin takes Alicia to safety.

         The dynamics here are interesting. Alicia has been the central character of the film, the heroine, for the entire runtime. Yet for how complex the film has painted Alicia, the film almost undermines its own effort to make the audience take her seriously by having her man swoop in and carry her near lifeless body to safety like she's your standard damsel in distress.

    But you have to consider the histories of all the respective players. By this point there shouldn’t be any doubt about the strength of her character. She’s proven herself smart and capable more than once within the film. Why would any of that be suddenly questioned just because she needs to phone a friend this one time? (Same reason why I can't help but roll my eyes when people throw a certain little mermaid under the bus for needing help taking out a giant sea monster when she's already been responsible for every plot turning point, including already saving her man on two occasions, but I'll get into that some other time ...)

Wonder Woman (2017)

    Modern audiences are conditioned to weigh the leading lady’s merits as a strongfemalecharacter (™) based exclusively on her performance within the film’s final ten minutes--whether or not she “saves the day.” There’s a reason for this, and I get the need for more representations of women who get to slay the dragon, but by focusing exclusively on that we run the risk of shortchanging a wide range of other female victories.

    This ending becomes less a statement on Alicia’s powerlessness than of Devlin’s responsibility to change. Really, it's about the expectation for all men to stop strangling women with their indifference.

    Maybe having Devlin sweep in and scoop Alicia out of the fire affirms the helplessness of the female who need always be rescued by her man. Or, maybe it’s a call for men to confront their own internal misogyny. If we’re being honest, Devlin wasn’t even “saving the day.” Hadn’t Alica done that by learning what the Nazis were planning? The only thing Devlin was saving was the woman he had wronged to begin with. Alicia had already proved herself a heroine, Devlin was just proving himself deserving of her.

    Notorious, then, seems to be making a comment on how women are drowning because of male ego and indicting men for their complicity in the subjugation of women. Says Modleski,

“Alicia’s suffering also, eventually, causes Devlin to come round and admit his own pain and suffering. One might speculate that the appeal of Notorious as a woman’s film is directly related to the way in which Alicia’s tribulations force Devlin to acknowledge his vulnerability and his error: in his way, Alicia’s ‘persecution, illness, and [near] death’ may be said to provide an outlet for the female spectator’s anger.”

    The question then is less about whether or not Alicia is a strong character—it has given its answer on this question many times over throughout the film—and more about whether or not a strong character should expect the man she loves to rise up to meet her.

    And that's a major issue with modern mainstream feminism in the media. The obsession has long been giving your strongfemalecharacter opportunities to display strength like it was some kind of party trick. But films like Notorious knew that was only ever just the beginning, and we've been trying to catch up ever since.

"First, Last, and Always not a Lady"

Funny Girl (1968)

    Feminism in film has gone through a dozen or so movements since 1946. The modern discussion is especially fascinated with how female characters are represented by female filmmakers.

         One of the more recent landmarks of feminist filmmaking is 2017’s Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig. The film was widely celebrated for its intelligent writing and for a lead heroine who walked the line of female maturation with such honesty. Critic Dana Stevens of Slate celebrates the titular character as “unapologetically imperfect.” Said Gerwig of the writing process,

“Writing this character was an exploration of all these things I didn’t have access to or I couldn’t be. In that way, it almost felt like this fairy-tale invention of a deeply flawed heroine, but one who I admire. I think she shows courage and a lot of character even when she’s flailing.”       

         A throughline of writing strong female characters throughout film history has been the capacity to represent them as whole human beings not easily sorted into broad categories. “Strength” is a secondary objective after “complexity.” When you achieve the latter, your character ceases to be an object of male ownership and becomes an agent in her own story. In this way, you can see the throughline between a character like Lady Bird and a character like Alicia Huberman.

Places in the Heart (1984)

    As our understanding of the gender gap has matured, the film industry has been given incentives to improve how it represents "the female," and it’s made significant strides forward because of it. But I find unexpected rewards in looking at ways in which classical Hollywood got it right, and without needing the same incentive that modern films do. A film like Notorious spotlights female agency and character in a way that feels so refreshing in any era, and that it came to these conclusions without responding to a hashtag makes it all the more remarkable.

    Notorious’ Alicia carries the cross allotted to women as she learns to recognize her own character and virtue underneath the labels she has been assigned. Even as the men in her life seek to possess her image and autonomy, her ownership of her identity only shines brighter for it. She is “neither projection nor perfectly perfumed fantasy.” As Alicia’s character oscillates between a man’s plaything and a feminist warrior, she becomes something else entirely: a human being.

                    --The Professor