<p> No filmmaker was more skilled at turning anxiety into entertainment than Alfred Hitchcock. The master of suspense kept audiences on edge, not with cheap surprises but by showing danger as it approached. Anticipation is almost always better than a shocking jolt. Three of his films from the 1940s have just been reissued on Blu-ray: one is masterpiece (<em>Notorious</em>), one a near masterpiece (<em>Rebecca</em>) and other a flawed but interesting effort (<em>Spellbound</em>). </p> <p><em>Spellbound</em> starred Ingrid Bergman as a very serious psychiatrist and Gregory Peck as a man in serious need of help. Although the story sags under the weight of its Freudian assumptions, which threaten to turn it into an instructional film, the conventions of Hollywood subvert psychoanalytical theory when it comes to the verities of love. “The mind isn\'t everythingthere is the heart!” Bergman finally announces. The plot borders on silly, yet <em>Spellbound</em> has many interesting touches, including deep noir shadows, a surreal dream sequence by Salvador Dali and what may have been the first cinematic use of the theremin, an instrument that would soon stand for all things weird and alien. </p> <p> <em>Rebecca </em>is a romance played out in a minor key. Of course, there has to be a (more or less) happy ending, but along the way one is led to wonder whether romantic love is just dangerous obsession dressed in party clothes. Laurence Olivier plays a brooding aristocrat presiding over his bad memories from a gothic manor overlooking the sea. Joan Fontaine is a wonderfully unspoiled beauty as the young woman who falls in love with him, never suspecting the ghosts she would encounter. Based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier (who would later provide Hitchcock with <em>The Birds</em>), <em>Rebecca</em> is <em>Jane Eyre </em>for the 20th century. It suffers only from one thing: the secondary yet crucial character of the obsessive housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, is overplayed as a bug-eyed madwoman, ready to whistle “They\'re coming to take me away, hah-hah.” </p> <p><em>Notorious</em> has no such flaws. Ingrid Bergman returns in her sexiest ever role as the daughter of a World War II traitor who reluctantly agrees to infiltrate the Nazi underground in postwar Brazil. Playing her government handler, Cary Grant reveals a seldom-seen harder edge. He\'s in love with Bergman, but resentful of her playgirl history and sullen over her for espionage, not love marriage to a leading Nazi (Claude Rains). The emotional complexity of their characters in pronounced, the dialogue sophisticated and the sensuous explorations of Bergman and Grant suggest that a kiss can be as momentous as finding a new land. Rains is also a marvel, squirming under the thumb of his jealous mother and desperately in love with the much young Bergman who, we anticipate, will eventually stab him in the back. </p>
