Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman kissing in a wine cellar. Even if Hitchcock didn’t direct this scene (which, incidentally, is almost stolen by the great Claude Rains, playing Bergman’s husband), it would still be worth watching for the simple reason that Bergman and Grant are both so absurdly beautiful. But because Hitchcock did direct this little masterpiece of sublimated sexual attraction, what might have been a mere diversion becomes one of the film’s pivotal scenes — and its most memorable. In it, Bergman and Grant are trying to find evidence to use against Rains’ character, Alexander Sebastian, a prominent Nazi who fled to Brazil after the Second World War. When Sebastian surprises them while they’re searching the cellar, Bergman and Grant cover their real purpose by hastily engaging in a pseudo-clandestine kiss in plain sight of her husband. The unspoken but obvious irony, of course, is that Bergman and Grant are passionately attracted to one another — but feel they have to feign passion in front of Sebastian to hide their real motives for being in the cellar in the first place. It’s all very twisted, erotic and nerve-wracking. In other words, it’s Hitchcock.
