Part 2: Notorious

4. Casablanca - Michael Curtiz (1942)
5. Spellbound - Alfred Hitchcock (1945)
6. Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock (1946)

Notorious. In 1950, Ingrid Bergman was publicly denounced on the floor of the US Senate. Bergman was denounced by senator Edwin C. Johnson who referred to her as “a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil.” The result: Bergman fled Hollywood, not to return until years later. Her denouncement came because of her affair with Italian film maker Roberto Rossellini and their out of wedlock child. Who was this woman who won the hearts and minds of America only to be denounced as notorious in private as she was on the screen?

Born August 29th, 1915, in Stockholm, Sweden; Bergman knew from a young age that she was destined for greatness. Her father, an artist himself, recorded her every birthday and hoped she would one day become an opera singer. Sadly, though, tragedy came quickly for young Ingrid; her mother died when she was only three years old and her father ten years later, leaving Bergman an orphan by the age of thirteen. By the age of seventeen she had already been accepted in Stockholm’s prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre School and within a year of her acceptance left to start acting in films with a Swedish studio. By 1939, the infamous Hollywood producer David O. Selznick swept her off to America to star in a film called Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939); an American remake of the Swedish Intermezzo (1936) which she had starred in only a few years before. From that point on, Ingrid was a star.

Throughout the 1940’s Bergman was to star in some of the greatest films of the decade: the incomparable Casa Blanca (1942), Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful masterpieces Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946). Through the 1940’s she was nominated four times for Best Actress at the Academy Awards and was even awarded it once for her role in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1945).

What was it about her that attracted all of America so much? How did this half-Swedish half-German girl win over America so thoroughly at a time when America was at war with Germany? The answer can only be found in watching her films, appreciating her unmistakable charm and almost kinetic allure on the screen. The 1940’s are home to an almost ceaseless roll of iconic and glamourous female starlets—Joan Fontaine, Lauren Bacall, Gloria Grahame—and yet, compared to her female contemporaries, none could quite match that unmistakable charm which made Ingrid Bergman notorious.

—Devon Gallant

Part 1: Three Sides of the Same Coin

1. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941)
2. The Maltese Falcon - John Huston (1941)
3. The Devil and Daniel Webster - William Dieterle (1941)


Three sides of the same coin. By 1941, America had just recovered from the devastating effects of the Great Depression. War, once more, was on the horizon. And, while some dreamed of a renewed prosperity, there came after the Great Depression a discernable disillusionment. America had roared with wealth in the twenties only to have been rewarded by a decade of the worst poverty known to the modern age.


From these tumultuous times came a disenchantment from the prosperity which America had for so long idealized. In 1941, as a new wave of directors were making their mark on Hollywood, this disenchantment seeped its way onto film in the form of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, and William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster. Each of these three films embodied America’s growing apprehension over the prosperity promised by the American Dream.

In Orson Welles’ directorial debut, Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane is a character who feels hindered by his inherited wealth. Kane longs for the tenderness of his youth while becoming increasingly embittered with life until the power of his wealth transforms him into a megalomaniac monster.

John Huston’s debut, The Maltese Falcon, the American Dream itself has been distilled into a tangible object, the icon of the American eagle transformed into the priceless Maltese falcon. The characters in the film lie, steal, and murder to get their hands on the promise of wealth which the falcon offers.

Finally, in William Dieterle’s Faustian tale The Devil and Daniel Webster, Dieterle depicts a poor, desperate farmer who sells his soul to the Devil for prosperity. Here, money itself, not only Mankind’s reaction to it, has become an evil force aligned with the Devil and paving the road to Hell.

Each of these three films signaled a new voice in America, disenchanted, portraying an increasingly darker side of America, a voice which questioned both the ideals of America as well as the aesthetics of American film. American cinema is an epic. This survey, like an epic, begins in media res, ‘in the middle of things.’ 1941 isn’t the beginning of American film however, it is a landmark year which heralded an American cinema coming into its own as a refined and significant art form.

-Devon Gallant