Notorious / 1792 Small Batch Bourbon

0:00 As we get into today's episode, I just want to take a second and remind you that there's a ton of extra content available to the members of Film and Whiskey Nation who support us through our Patreon. Check us out on patreon.com/film Whiskey. In 1946, director Alfred Hitchcock and star Cary Grant gave the world an espionage thriller that set the stage for every spy movie to come. In 2023, we go back to basics with a reliable bourbon workhorse. The film is notorious. The whiskey is 1792 Small Batch and we'll review them both. This is. The Film and Whiskey podcast.

1:00 Welcome to the Film and Whiskey Podcast, where each week we review a classic movie and a glass of whiskey. I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And this week we are kicking off our last director of the season one, Alfred Hitchcock, with his 1946 espionage thriller Notorious. Never heard of him. Brad Yeah, I don't really know where to start with this, but there's a couple leads that I am. Considering burying here, Let's start with Hitchcock. We have heard of him before because he is already one of our most watched directors on film and whiskey I believe up to this point we have done 4 films by Mr. Hitchcock and after this miniseries we will be at 9 and he will be far and away.

1:42 I think our or maybe tied with Scorsese for the number one spot. Well man, have we watched 9 Scorsese films. You know what? Now that I think about it, I think we've still. He'll still have the crown. I think it's 10 Scorsese films. Jeez, yeah, we haven't watched 10 Scorsese films. We've. Watched a whole bunch, man. Jeez Louise, I was going to say, because we watched what Vertigo? Rear Window Psycho. North by Northwest and North by Northwest, yeah. So what we wanted to do, let me rephrase. What I wanted to do with this last miniseries was Hitchcock is one of those directors. That is in very rarefied air. Like a Scorsese.

2:22 Like a Spielberg. You know, actually go ahead to catch a thief. Oh yeah. Oh, so he will be tied with Scorsese? Yeah, he sure will. I'll have to catch a thief. No, bueno. I did not enjoy that film. It's not a big fan, gorgeous to look at, but not much going on there. With Hitchcock, as with some of these other big name directors, there is a tier of their films that is kind of like essential viewing, not just. To watch their films. But if you're going to be a fan of classic films, you have to watch X number of their films. And then there's kind of a second tier where it's not just all right, you watch these if you're a completist, but it's also like, hey there, you know, Hitchcock has these five more films in the IMDb Top 250. So as you start to round out your education, you kind of have to watch these ones too.

3:12 And so where most directors would already have like a massive falloff in their second tier, directors like Hitchcock are still kind of working with their A material. And so I picked 5 movies that I I could have picked I think six or seven. I just tried to pick five that I thought would would help round out our classic movie viewing here, starting with Notorious, a movie that I said last week I've never seen before. Brad Yeah, Well, and the the fascinating thing for me is that, you know, this is 1946. Before we got on the air, Bob, you informed me that this is like his 12th, 15th, 18th movie. Yeah, Hitchcock. Hitchcock made his bones in England at the end of the silent era. He didn't come to America until 1940. His first American film is a movie called Rebecca, which is a movie that won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. So he kind of arrived on the shores with The Big Bang. And so by 46, yeah, he's not only one of the most famous film makers in the world, but he is a very seasoned veteran here. Yeah, which is.

4:13 Which is interesting, because, spoiler alert, there are things about this movie that felt less polished than a lot of his later films. You know, Brad, I have to agree. Like I said, I've never seen this movie before. And there's a there's a you know, he's making at least one movie a year at this point, but. I kind of group this movie in with some of his other early 1940s films. So in 41 he makes a movie called Suspicion with Cary Grants, which is considered, you know, among his classics. He also makes a movie, I think the year before this called Spellbound, which costars Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. And so in this one you've got Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

4:54 And I've always just pictured all three of those movies as kind of like this mishmash, and I never knew where to start with any of them. So I've never seen any of them. So this is kind of like knocking out one of a trilogy for me. And I have to agree with you man. I I was thinking about To catch a Thief a lot as I watched this movie because it really finds its footing in the second-half for me. But the first half is kind of incomprehensible slash. Very boring, yeah. And I don't know if we should move into, Brad explains. But I am 100% with you. It felt like I'm this is a very rare thing. I think I've maybe said this once, maybe twice before in our 250 plus episodes, however many we've done. I think this movie should have been a little longer. That's a scorching hot take.

5:47 It is a scorching hot take. It's like it. What an hour and 42 minutes, I think. It feels like free. Well, that's the thing though. I feel like they needed more time to develop the relationships and the the characters and I feel like even just like 10 minutes hour and 53 hour 55 and you would have had just a little extra where it didn't. It wouldn't have felt quite as rushed. Well, let's go ahead and move into, Brad explains. So that I can respond to what you just said. But I love it when we already give our thoughts on the movie at the six minute mark of the episode. You're welcome. As you and I know, Brad, we only need 60 seconds of a listener's attention to be counted as a download. So you know, folks, if you don't like where we're going with this, thank you for your time.

6:32 We'll see you next week. But at this point we are going to move over to, Brad explains. Brad's gonna give us the movie plots with only 60 seconds ticking on the clock, so let's go ahead and do your take with this little segment that we call Brad explains. Brad Explains is the part of the podcast where Brad breaks down the plot of the movie that he has just seen, often for the first time. This is the first time watch both for Brad and for myself. Brad, you know, we've already tipped our hand a little bit. This movie doesn't totally work for us, and I feel like sometimes that bleeds into, Brad explains. I I sense that you have more energy tonight than you have sometimes when you're not a fan of a movie, like it hasn't quite approached that zone where you just completely check out, you know, which bodes well for, Brad explains.

7:20 So you've got one minute on the clock. Go ahead and spoil the whole thing, because I don't know if we're going to give this movie our recommendation or not. Anyway, 60 seconds. Brad and go. The film Notorious is about a daughter of a convicted German Nazi spy in America. I'm I'm assuming that this is like set during the war. Or immediately after. Like, kind of, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the daughter is played by Ingrid Bergman. She is convinced by an American spy, basically played by Cary Grant, to play the double agent, to go to South America and try to infiltrate a ring of Nazi scientists. And, you know, influencers and whatever they are, they love Nazi people and Inger Bergman's going to take them down. Bob, they have a party where they're trying to break into the secret vault which is in the wine cellar where Cary Grant finds out that they're storing uranium which is used to make the atomic bomb 10 second, they try to poison Ingrid Bergman so they can protect themselves, they being her now husband, the German guy and his mother.

8:39 Boom, boom. That was actually a really good, Brad explains. And I'll tell you why. Because you broke down all of the things that happen in the movie. And you didn't really get into themes of the movie. And I think that's a really good jumping off point because part of the reason this movie doesn't work for me, Brad, is that I was having to both read along with what was happening in the movie on like the IMDb synopsis page. Because there were some things in the script that weren't totally clear. And I felt like it was really jumping around and kind of leaving out crucial elements. Yes. And at the same time, I was also reading like the Wikipedia page and you know, like the Criterion Collection essay and which, which focused more on themes of the movie. Roger Ebert loved this movie, thought it was one of the 10 best films ever made on one of his lists that he made that it was his favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie and went in on the themes of love and trust and betrayal in the movie. And I started to put the the puzzle together a little bit. And I feel dumb saying this because I think fans of this movie will will know this right off the the jump. But this is a movie that is primarily structured like a romantic melodrama of the time and he kind of shoe not shoehorns in.

9:56 He kind of Trojan horses, a spy thriller into the whole thing. And then by the end of the movie, the spy thriller elements take over. And I think when you view it through that lens, the movie makes a lot more sense that it is trying, at the very least in the first half. To establish this deep, dramatic, whirlwind romance of forbidden love between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grants, and as this sort of love triangle forms between Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and her Nazi husband, played by Claude Raines, it it tests the boundaries of all three of them. And it really gets into the themes that Hitchcock's trying to explore. Now, whether or not it succeeds at that, I think it's another story, but I thought that was really helpful for me to read. Because I wasn't quite seeing it on the screen, and once someone kind of told me the lens to start looking at the movie, I thought that the structure of it made a lot more sense. You know, regardless of whether or not it was actually successful at that.

10:54 See Bob, you did about a good as good a job as Hitchcock did of explain explaining the themes. What what are the themes? I didn't catch anything about the actual themes of the movie in there. Well, I definitely said them explicitly. Love and trust and betrayal. And I talked about romantic melodrama. Damn it, Brad, just listen to me once in a while, man. Jeez, I mean, I was listening, but there's a whole lot of words and I don't know if anything got said. And I think that's like kind of my issue with the movie is like, yeah, there's there's themes of love and and betrayal and and mistrust, but there's no establishment of who these characters are. Yes, that is done compellingly.

11:40 I agree. And we were going to get there, Brad, and you just had to insult me along the way just to piss me off as we jump into this journey today. Brad it makes makes for better episode. I hate you so much sometimes. All right. So yeah, I guess let's just start there. We can talk about the performances and stuff later. The movie doesn't do a good job establishing what it wants to be about. And the point I was trying to make is. Was trying to be kind to the movie by saying like, oh, once someone explicitly told me what to look for, I could see it. But the movie does a really bad job of just showing it. So the movie starts out with Bergman at her father's trial getting convicted. You can tell that he is some sort of a Nazi because he's getting convicted for treason. She has a party at her house that night where she gets really, really drunk to try to forget about the whole thing. And there's this mysterious guy at her house, Cary Grants. You have no idea who he is or what he's there for. And you don't really know, like, what her whole deal is. You know, that she's the daughter of a Nazi. And that can't be good.

12:38 And then all of a sudden she's like, I'm very drunk. Let's go for a drive. And he goes, sure. And immediately I'm like, what is going on in this movie? Like, where are we going? What are we doing? There's an extended sequence of her drunk driving and getting pulled over by the cops. And then you, you kind of start to piece together, oh, I think Cary Grant's working for somebody in the government because he gets them off of a ticket. And then immediately you get thrust into this whole espionage thing where they tell Ingrid Bergman like, hey, come come with me, we're going to go down to South America. And now they're there. And then all of a sudden she's in love with Cary Grant. And that comes out of left field. And we spend 20 minutes with them just being kind of frolicky. And then the movie finally clicks into place enough to tell us what it's about at like, I don't know, the 35 minute mark. Is that fair?

13:31 Like, is that a good timeline of when we finally start getting crucial information? Yeah, I I think so. And the the hard part is that even as you start to get crucial information, you're like, oh, OK, that there's this woman who kind of sucks and this guy's trying to get her to do things for her, but he falls in love with her. Like I think it comes back to kind of something you said earlier that the movie doesn't show it to you it it tells you a lot of things. And Cary Grant has to deliver dialogue that's just bad and he does his best with it because he's Cary freaking Grant. But at the end of the day when he has to tell the audience you're a drunken and and you you always will be and you're just chalking up things on your night stand and sleeping around and and like you're basically he basically just says you're a whore and you always will be right and and and that's that's her character arc.

14:32 Well, as he sees it, right. Because they're both. Yeah. They're both, like hiding things from each other. And I think that, like, again, what they're trying to do is the romantic comedy thing where it's like, oh, there's a there's a breakdown of communication that could have been easily solved if they just said the thing to each other. And it gets to the point where like by the end of the movie. The Nazis have figured out that Ingrid Bergman is an American agent, and they start poisoning her slowly. And she and Cary Grant are at such odds because they have fallen in love. And then she gets this assignment to infiltrate this Nazi ring, which then leads to her getting a marriage proposal from Claude Raines. And the Americans basically ask her very nicely, will you please marry this guy?

15:16 And she goes, sure. So then she does that and now they're mad. Cary Grant and her are mad at each other because. She wants him to fight for her and he won't. And he thinks that she's just back to her old ways and being promiscuous. And so, you know, it it plays like a romantic comedy that has absolutely no laughs in it. And I think that, like, these two actors are such good actors that it almost still works. But the plot mechanics of that part of the movie really fall flat for me. Yeah. Well, and especially even when they're talking about the people that she needs to go after. The the Americans know that Alex Sebastian, played by Claude Raines, was a friend of her father's. And so they're just like, well, you know, maybe she can get in, but then she just kind of conveniently goes, yes. And he was also in love with me.

16:11 And they're like, how convenient. Brilliant. And it just it just feels very contrived and like it's not even like it's like plot holes or anything like it, it it's just that the plot is like spoon fed to the audience. Yeah, I was going to say I don't even know if contrived is the right word. It it feels like spread thin. It's like there's very little there to develop. And they're trying to hold like 2 halves of a plot in tension with each other. And the 1/2 is this love triangle and the other half is the actual like infiltrating Nazi stuff. And they try to put them both on equal footing, but not only are they not of equal importance or equal thrills, I guess, but they're also like one is almost underdeveloped because you don't get enough Nazi infiltration stuff.

17:07 Because they're trying to overdo the love stuff, and there's just not enough material there to justify how much time they spend on it. OK, let's stop crapping all over the movie. Let's just talk about performances. Get into our normal stuff. Let's start with the two leads, because I think we should move to Claude Rains when we start talking about the good stuff of the movie. Like, does that make sense? Like, I I like that part of the movie better. So I think maybe he'll be our bridge to that. But Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are so fascinating to me in this movie, Brad, because I think, especially towards the end of the movie, I really do buy that they have like a deep abiding love for each other. When he rescues her at the end of the film, it's like it's really well done.

17:52 But I also wouldn't say they have chemistry, quote UN quote, Like there are no sparks flying off this couple and part of it is because they hate each other for most of the movie. But even then, like, you know, When Harry Met Sally is all about two people who hate each other the whole movie. I'm never at a loss for believing that both of these people are, like, really horny and really sexy. And they like, they have a great couple scenes early in the early going where they're like just being horny at each other. And it's really compelling because they're both, like I said, phenomenal actors. Do I? Do we need to add that into the director scoring?

18:33 How do they direct compelling horniness? I do. I do like the idea of be horny at each other, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is like the the sparks don't fly the way they do with like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn and or Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. Like, they're a believable couple and I see what they're trying to do and it's a kind of a much sexier thing. But I don't really feel the IT factor off of them. Well. And the and I think that this is where Hitchcock's avoidance and hatred of the Hayes code really kind of comes into play. Because you know the the whole scene where they're on the balcony making out like the Hayes code at this point said you weren't allowed to kiss for more than three seconds. And he has them making out for like a minute and a half. But it's but it's just like, you know, pecs and kisses on the neck and they're supposed to talk while they're doing it and it just, it feels way more awkward than just had. Yeah.

19:35 And granted, he's not allowed to do this, but like, it feels a lot more awkward than a film 10 years later when you just have like a 25 second passionate kiss where you're like, Oh yeah, they they really like each other. I don't know. It felt it just felt that whole scene felt kind of funky to me. Cary Grant is an interesting figure in this movie. So five years before this, he plays a character in the movie Suspicion, that is. Is he a villain? Is he not a villain? And that's what the whole movie is about. And there's actually like some really cool nods in this movie to the movie suspicion where he is suspected of poisoning his wife in that movie. And Grant was really, really good at leveraging his own movie star persona to whatever the character needed.

20:19 So like if he needed to be a charming, perhaps murderer, he could play it that way. He could be kind of uneasy. Cary Grant. He could also be like the absolute buffoon, falling over himself in a bunch of slapstick comedies. He could play loose with it like a George Clooney type, like he doesn't charade. This movie is kind of like in between charming and super duper scary Cary Grant and it's it kind of comes across mostly as like restraint and I think it does a good job of showing his range. And I don't know if anyone else would have been better in this role, so I don't want to crap on Cary Grant. I just don't know if this is a really compelling character at all.

21:02 No, I I 100% agree, and I think it's because he's not allowed to lean into either role far enough. Like he's not allowed to be the scorned lover for enough of the film. Because at that point, the film is mostly focused on Claude Raines and Ingrid Bergman, and yet he's also not allowed to be the Super spy. Other than one scene where he knocks a wine bottle off and cleans it up. But you know what I mean? Like that's the extent of him being a super spy. And I I think the the scene that epitomizes the lack of chemistry between Ingrid and Kerry, as well as just kind of the the awkwardness of some of the transitions of the film is when they are caught by Claude Raines when you know he kisses her and like it. It just didn't.

21:53 Work he like he kisses her and he tells her to push him off but then she doesn't do that and like it should have been I I don't know, this is just my brain. It should have been like, I'm going to kiss you and then you immediately slap me and no, they like passionately kissed And then she casually is like, oh, I don't actually love him. He forced himself on me and you're like, well, none of none of this is is working and I for me. I don't think it's Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. I think it's Hitchcock and the script. Yeah, I was just saying it's more the script than Hitchcock. And The funny thing is this script gets nominated for an Academy Award. It is apparently a well respected script even today. And I think that has a lot more to do with like the plot mechanics and the way that the movie ends than it does with some of these, what I would call like setup scenes because the setup is so sloppy.

22:47 But I don't want to get too far away from our two leads. And let's talk about Ingrid Bergman. Primarily because I came away from this movie even more impressed with Ingrid Bergman as an actress than I've ever been. And I I love Casablanca's maybe my favorite movie. She is next level good in this movie, Brad in a movie that I don't know that I love. If if she is not playing this lead role, I think it's an even worse movie. 100% dude Ingrid has an ability. To not only keep the camera like magnetically attached to her and your attention attached to her, I think that what she does with her eyes in this movie as she like flashes hurt and betrayal and then covers it up with an iron wall really quickly is just.

23:37 It like it's act like it's acting 400. Like she is teaching an advanced class and acting here. Yeah, talk about knowing your own strengths and leaning into them. Like the scene where she figures out she's being poisoned and what because they say like don't don't pick up her coffee and the way her eyes are just putting things together in that room. It is such compelling stuff. She is so good at playing scared. She is so good at playing confident and she has to do both of them in this movie and the emotional range like it's it's just a master class man. I cannot say enough good things about her. When I haven't seen like a ton of Ingrid Bergman movies, but I feel like in this one something that I enjoyed is that she allows her German accent to just slightly come through throughout the film and I think it just adds a little bit to that tension of like.

24:31 She is trying to infiltrate this German scientist spy ring and she's trying to be one of them. And and there's just a little hint of it coming through that I I personally thought was really well done. Yeah, she has that, like just enough of a European accent. She's actually a Swedish actress. She's not German, but like the Swedishness sounds kind of German so that she'd like, you know, it. It's to her benefit in a movie like this. And I think that that's a good segue into talking about that part of the movie where she is married to Claude Rains. Now I have gone on record saying Claude Rains is one of my favorite actors of all time. He he is like a Thomas Mitchell in that he's always playing a character actor and he is, I think to this day underappreciated for what he brings to the table in this movie. He does something that I very rarely see him do, and that is kind of literally and figuratively let his hair down a little.

25:26 Like, he is much more suave. And he's playing, even though he's clearly an older man in this movie, he's playing it with an energy of a younger man. And I think that's really interesting because even in the script he talks about like being a man of my age, but he's playing it kind of loose. And he is, I mean, you know, for lack of a better word, like he is a romantic lead in this movie. And I think it works really, really well because you've seen him in movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where he's playing much older than he is in real life. In Casablanca. You know, he's the womanizer, but he's a very prim and proper sort of officer, and that's kind of what you're used to seeing from Claude Raines. And so to see him in like in a bathrobe and just kind of flirting with Ingrid Bergman, it works really, really well.

26:13 And it's a side of him I've never seen before. And on top of that, you see him, like truly smitten. And later in the film when he finds out that she's an American agent, like he like he plays heartbroken and devastated incredibly well. And I think it his mother is a perfect foil in that scene to you know kind of poke and prod at him and the the way he's acting and it like it just has it. It's a perfect setup to show him processing what's going on and I think that's it seems like that. That this movie needed more of it, needed more opportunities for the characters just to sit back and process what was going on in this, you know, constructed world of of Nazi spies that the other characters didn't get to have and Claude Rains does get to have. And you know his mother is 1 dimensional and she's exactly what she needs to be for Claude Rains to develop. And I I wish they had more of it because Claude takes it and runs with it, right?

27:18 Yeah. I think it in a lot of ways what this movie is missing. It's not just like the the kind of hyper focused direction that Hitchcock has in the later stages of his career, but it's also that, like, it just doesn't have that kind of weirdness that Hitchcock gets into sometimes. Like the mother character in this movie is really similar to the mother character in Psycho. Like, there's a weird, kind of, like, psychosexual thing going on there, and Claude Rains is very clearly just getting cooked and I guess is okay with it. You know, like there's this unexplored, weird sexual dynamics in this movie. And I'm not saying, like, I need a treatise on all of those things. But I also feel like as you get farther into Hitchcock's career, he's willing to kind of lead into those weirdness factors a little bit more. When I was reading a little bit about this movie today, Brad, they they said like this is the first movie where Hitchcock really started to work with themes like the mother character and he he has like overbearing moms as a theme in all of his movies.

28:20 Pretty much after this, like even North by Northwest, it's played for laughs. But that's what the mother character in that movie is like I. Wonder what Hitchcock's mom was like? Yeah, I think that's what his biographers are always saying. Like he he ties his his own weird upbringing with his mom into these movies and it's interesting and I think it's noteworthy is like a footnote to his career, but it just feels a little under baked. So are you saying that you didn't like the mother character in this? I'm not saying I didn't like her. I think she's like, serves the purpose that she needs to serve as basically like a plot device. I guess what I'm what I'm saying is like, there are, even if you don't, like, add another scene where Cary Grant's like, huh, so your husband's a weirdo, huh?

29:02 Like, there's just, there's ways that you could have kind of leaned into the eyebrow raising factor of it all. Like, Ingrid Bergman doesn't ever seem to be like, huh, that's a weird dynamic, you know? And I think that, like, even in some of the direction of the movie, Hitchcock could have just, like, directed his actors to milk moments a little more or be a little more confused or curious. It just seems like there's something there that they completely leave on the table and never touch. And I don't know if that has to do with the Hays Code or what, but it's an interesting thing in a movie about a weird a weirdo Nazi who lives in South America.

29:44 And I'm like, that would have been interesting if they had mentioned that or explored it at all. Yeah, I'm. I'm going to be honest with you, Bob. I don't. I don't think that there was as much weird sexual tension between Claude Raines and his mom. I'm not saying sexual tension. I'm just saying like the way that he becomes a little boy around her and is constantly like going to her for help and aid. It's a very clearly like there's some Freudian stuff going on in this movie. I just think it's an interesting choice. I actually did not expect to spend multiple minutes talking about this one plot point. But I guess what I'm saying is it is just a microcosm of the fact that like a lot of this movie feels under baked and that when Hitchcock finally decides to just make it a spy thriller in the last half hour, the movie really works for me.

30:31 It's just all of these either underdeveloped things and or loose threads that never get connected that make it kind of a frustrating experience overall for me. Yeah, no, I I'm 100% with you there. I I think that with the entire film, yeah, Half Baked is a good way of putting it. It feels like the editing is like. Whoa, we're done now. Next. And then. Yeah. And then there are times where it's like we have been watching them, you know, fall in love and lovey, dovey eyes at each other for 15 minutes. And then all of a sudden they're like in another country. And it's been like weeks and weeks. And they're like, all right, so you're going to marry this guy? And I'm like, wait a minute, what?

31:12 How much time did we skip just now? Also, I think that you've always just been a whore and I will never trust you. Wait, what? What is going on here? I think this is the perfect place, Brad. On that note, you know, on the note that you always want to end on right there. This is a perfect place for us to stop. Because I do want to talk about things that really, really worked for me about this movie when we come back. And almost all of them have to do with Hitchcock's direction and his visual style. So let's stop here. Let's drink this 1792, and then we'll come back and give the movie a little bit of love. What do you say? Let's get to it. All right.

31:55 So today we are checking out 1792 Small Batch. Brad, believe it or not, I think this is the 1st 1792 product we've ever had on the show, which is crazy to me because I've had a bottle of it on my shelf for years. I have a bottle of Foolproof on my shelf. It's some of my favorite whiskey. It's really, really good stuff. And we actually had a listener send us some samples of almost the whole Flight of 1792 products and we've been trying to work them in and it just hasn't happened for, I don't know, like three or Four Seasons now. So like, we're finally getting around to it. But over the next five weeks, we're going to be trying five different kinds of 1792, starting today with their flagship product, the small Batch. Yeah, there's.

32:39 So there's small batch comes at 93.7 proof, which is actually a proof that I'm very excited about. I like that 90 to 95 range. It's such a weirdly specific number. I don't know if it has any significance, but like you'd never see decimals unless it's like a single barrel. It's just so weird to see 93.7. I was. I feel like once you get in the 100 and 10s and up is when you start to see decimals. But sure, man 93.7, let's do it. So 1792 says that they have a high rye mash bill, which is crazy because I, you know, I don't want to jump ahead into the nose. I don't pick up a ton of rye on this, but it is a fan favorite.

33:20 And like I said, when we get to the foolproof, I think I'm just going to be gushing and gushing. But when it comes to readily available thirtyish dollar bottles of whiskey, this is one that is like it's in the upper tier of those it could be gifted. It's a beautiful bottle to look at. And so it's high time, Brad, that we try some 1792. So what do you say we dive into the nose? Yeah, so the nose is a relatively simple nose. I got some peanuts, some caramel, some vanilla, and a little bit of leather. It was intriguing, but nothing really stood out to me. There wasn't a lot of depth to it. I'll give it a 7 out of 10. Yeah, I'm going to be a little higher than that. It's a beautifully sweet nose.

34:02 There's a lot of caramel. I almost get like some pink bubble gum on it as well. I get a little bit of the rye because it comes through with like a little bit of a soured note. And I don't mean like soured mash, but I mean like a dill kind of a thing. There's a little bit of that underlying this. Again, it doesn't knows like a high rye. It knows as more like a weeded bourbon. And so that's when I looked at the mash bill. I was kind of surprised to see that. I still think it works really well, especially you know Brad. In my mind I'm going to be comparing this to like Elijah Craig or you know what's another $30 bottle of whiskey, whatever you might, I don't know, Jim Beam double oaked or something. Like it's it's a mid shelf product and it's the entry level version of this brand. I think it smells really, really good for that kind of thing. I would definitely choose this over something like a Jack Daniels for instance.

34:54 I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10 on the nose. See. I yeah, having drank the entire thing. I I think 8 out of 10 is really high for this Bob. The pallet was not great. There's some caramel. The vanilla kind of comes through. Some of those rice spices start to happen. For me though it was really harsh. Like I like. I would have guessed that this was a much higher proof. The ethanol kind of overpowers the flavor. I give it a 5 1/2 out of 10 dude. I'm wondering if the samples that we have had sitting on our shelf for too long have gotten oxidized or something Because I'm drinking out of the bottle from my shelf and I'm not getting any of that. Like next time I see you, I'm going to bring the bottle and just give it to you and be like, is this the same thing you tried?

35:44 Because this is really, really beautiful. Man. I get black cherry on this on the palette. It does get like very okie and tobacco and leather forward, but it doesn't tip into bitterness. It doesn't tip into sourness and it never gets harsh for me and you know Brad, like we've we've tried whiskeys that are not high proof that still drank really harsh like that, the original Blantons that we tried. This doesn't do that for me. So you like, it's not that I don't trust your palate, but I'm also wondering like what's going on with that sample that you have, because I'm going to give this an 8 1/2 out of 10. Yeah. No, this is 5 1/2 on the pallet. It's a six on the finish. It's kind of generically sweet with a little bit of oakiness. It's, it's fine.

36:30 On the finish, I I don't know what were your notes. Sometimes I I wonder if you know how dismissive you are. Like I oh I just spent 30 seconds saying, hey, I totally trust you. I think maybe your samples off and then use your first words were yeah, no, it's a 5 1/2. Like like you just completely dismissed what I said, oh man, the finish is really good on this. Once again I think that it is. It's like candy. Sweet. I get that bubble gum coming back a little bit, a little bit of leather, some toasted oak on the finish. I'm going to give it a 7 1/2 on the finish. And man, I wish we were in the same room trying this out of the same bottle because I just.

37:14 I really need to know. Yeah. You got to get it to me, man. Yeah, I'm willing to try it. Yeah. I I mean, I feel like this is going sideways. I'll just tell you 5 out of 10 on balance, 5 out of 10 on value for me, like this is $33 in the state of Ohio. I think that's overpriced it. It used to be apparently around like the 26 to $28.00 range. If that was the case, I think I'd come up to like a 6 1/2 or A7 but over $30 what I am drinking. Is a. It's a simple palette. It has harsh edges. I just don't think it's worth that 30 plus dollar price range. This is a rough day for you on film and whiskey. A movie you don't like, A whiskey you don't like. I'm going to give it a 7 1/2 on balance. I'm going to give it an 8 on value because what I'm drinking is pretty good and that's bringing me out to a 39.5. We're going to be in vastly different places here, I suspect.

38:17 Yeah, Bob, I'm sitting at a 28.5 out of 50. Oh my gosh, man, I can't hold on 39.5 and you said 28.5. Yeah, I was going to say 11 points away from each other might be the one of the biggest gaps we've ever had. Ever. Ever. Yeah, dude, I can't wait to see you again. I'm like, I'm gonna. First thing I do is just like, pour this down your throat. Straight down the goal and tell me what you think. Now we're coming out to an average of just a 34 out of 50 or a 68 out of 100. This is an interesting one because I'm not going to ask you like do you recommend it's It's clear you don't. It's clear that I do. I think for $30 it's almost worth buying the bottle just to determine which of us is wrong, because we are so at odds on this one.

39:08 Yeah, I was going to say like 30-3 dollars is not the cheapest of whiskeys that's in the getting into the mid tier whiskey range. But it's 30 bucks like you know after tax you're spending 35 bucks. It's not that bad. If you want to try it out for yourself, go for it. I I mean, I guess I'd say this, if you want to determine who is right, Bob or Brad. Go to the bar, get a pour of it. It's readily available. You'll probably spend 4 or $5. I was going to say this is like a 5-6 dollar pour Max. Yeah, totally worth it. Try it out. Get on Instagram, tell me how right I am, and yeah, we can move on to talking about Notorious. What an economical episode this is. Brad, we're going to get out of here in in well under an hour today.

39:52 Yeah, flying through, right. Let's get back to talking about Notorious. What do you say? Let's get to it. All right, everybody. That was 1792. Small batch, a whiskey that was a quite a small performer, if I do say so myself. I've never been called a small performer, Brad, so I wouldn't know. Sex jokes. Boom. Now. Now your challenge is segue us into the next segment. You know what else is never been known as small Canada. Oh, there it is. Favorite segments. 2 facts in a falsehood. Brad is gonna try to stumpy ball 2 alright and what is wrong? 2 facts in a falsehood. 2 Facts in a Falsehood is the part of the podcast where Brad presents three items to me as fact about the making of this film, one of which is a complete lie. I'm always interested in two Facts in a Falsehood. Well, period.

40:56 Just I I always AM. I'm especially interested because I am still one game away from securing a 500 season. But I'm even more interested because Brad clearly does not like this movie and I'm interested to see how that affects his fact slash fiction writing. So Brad, with all that said, hit me with your two facts in a falsehood. Fact number one, director Sir Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht consulted a Nobel Prize winning physicist on how to make an atomic bomb. He refused to answer, but confirmed that the principal ingredients, uranium, could fit into a wine bottle.

41:40 Fact #2. Hitchcock had the set for the Sebastian home rebuilt three times after finding himself dissatisfied with the look of the entrance hall, first thinking it too small, then too large. Fact #3, Claude Rains was made to stand on a box for several of his scenes with Ingrid Bergman. This gave the strange effect that Rains and Cary Grant were slightly taller than Bergman, while Grant was actually about 7 inches taller than Rain. Interesting. Number one is sticking out to me and and here's why, because I know that Hitchcock has been quoted as saying, like we did seek out a physicist. When we were writing the script, because the FBI followed me around for a year afterwards because no one knew about uranium. Now after the bomb goes off and the Trinity tests and all of their information becomes public, people understand that it's uranium.

42:33 But like when they were developing this movie, David O Selznick was originally attached as producer and he thought the uranium thing was confusing as hell. He had no idea what was going on because again, the world didn't know about the bomb they were building. Isn't that? Isn't that crazy to think about? Yeah, that like at the time this movie came out, everybody's like, I I don't get what these scientists are working on and anybody like, I don't know, post 1950 is immediately like nuclear warfare. Everybody. The so The thing is though, having seen Oppenheimer a number of Times Now, the vessel that they use to show how much uranium they need is clearly bigger than a wine bottle.

43:13 So I'm also like, is Brad going to be so nitpicky? That he would add that little fictional thing to the end of what is otherwise a factual statement. Am I? Am I feeling petty after watching a movie I didn't like and drinking a whiskey that I vastly disliked? So the second one again is the innocuous sounding one of the three which you got me with last week and the third one I don't remember. Would you like me to read it? Just to summarize, what was the What was the keywords Claude Raid stood on? Oh. Yeah, stood in the box. He seemed like a short guy. We we do stand a short king here on film and whiskey and he was shortening Casablanca.

43:57 So I'm going to say 3 is true. I'm going to say two is true too. And and I'm going to suspect that you tried to get me with #1. And I'll say one is the falsehood, Bob. Today was a beautiful opportunity to reach 500 for you and in this very moment you have not achieved that. What? Was the falsehood man #2? You got me twice in a row with the one that I was least concerned about. Yeah. As soon as you started talking about #1 for like 3 minutes, I was like, oh, I got him. I got him.

44:41 Man, that's the sucky thing is like, I knew that part of that was true. And I also know that you're doing your best to trip me up here. So I was like, oh, maybe he did. I'm psyching myself out now, is what I'm saying. Here's a question. If I had said Sir Alfred Hitchcock and screen owner Ben Hecht consulted Nobel Prize winner Doctor Robert Milliken on how to make an atomic bomb, blah blah blah blah blah. Would that have changed your answer? Probably. I think that was the guy's name, right? It was. Yeah, I don't know. Who knows, man? What's done is done, Brad. What's done is done. I'm a winner. And I I think that 15 is 13. I was going to say that puts me at 13 and 15, one step closer to making you 15 and 17, Bob. All I have to do is win one more. I have to not blow A31 lead in these last four episodes. Are Are you the Warriors?

45:36 Gosh. All right, man. Let's talk about Notorious. And important disclaimer, we are talking about the 1946 film Notorious. And not in fact the 2009 biopic about the Notorious BIGI know that if you've made it this far, you probably know that, but it's just, you know, it's important that we mentioned. I mean it it sounds like that's probably the same movie at the end of the day. I was really impressed with the camera work in this movie, Brad. The camera is constantly moving. There are a number of wonders in this movie that are like really beautiful, like it'll be. It starts on an image of a coffee cup on a table and then it tilts up to Ingrid Bergman and the camera moves on a Dolly over to where Claude Rains is sitting. And then it swivels around and shows the mother, and it's all done in one consecutive shot.

46:24 And there is one shot in this movie that I have come to understand after I went oh crap, that's a cool shot and then saw it all over the Internet. That is like V Shot and I'm wondering if you also picked up on it as V Shot from this movie. It's Cary Grant standing in the door. It's not. I mean that's a cool. But the shot that like go ahead, I was going to say for me, like the one shot from the film that I was blown away by was when she's kind of laying half upside down sideways as she's drunk and he kind of has this like kind of has like a Dutch angle cock eyed, you know, he's lit in a really interesting way.

47:04 I I loved that shot near the start of the film. That was a cool shot too, and I have a list of like. These were cool shots, but the one the one that like, has essays written about it is she has just figured out that she needs to steal this key from him. She steals the key. And then it fades to them having gotten ready for this party, and they're having this dinner party. And the shot starts like in the very upper corner of, like, the ceiling of their grand hall. And it's a tracking shot that was done in the 40s when cameras weighed millions of pounds. And I don't know how they did it, but it goes from the balcony. All the way down to the first floor and it becomes a close up of her hand holding this key where the camera's like 2 inches away from her hand. And for the love of me, I still don't understand how they pulled that shot off.

47:55 It is like a crazy crazy shot when you consider the time period. Then they just like zoom in, Bob. I don't believe they did. I don't think it was a zoom. You just you just gotta build my. No, you just like you just pinch your fingers on the screen on the iPhone and then it just does what you want it to do. Yeah, that's it, man. I don't. I don't know what you're freaking out about. You know, I often find myself wondering, why didn't Hitchcock just use more drones? Yes, yeah, I think some drone shots really could have added to this movie pop can I can I just say it as a side like drone shots suck in movies. Like 92% of drone shots feel so out of place compared to the rest of the traditional cinematography that they just ruin movie scenes.

48:49 Yeah, and it's not even just like overhead shots of cities. It's like. It's very specifically drone shots. You can tell when something's filmed by a drone because they tried, they've tried to replace every shot that used to be called a helicopter shot with drone shots. And like when you watch the original West Side Story and it starts with that montage of, like, overhead shots, it's a helicopter shot. And sometimes you can tell like the camera jiggles a little because of like the the propeller helicopter, I mean the opening of the Shining. Yeah, 100%. You know what though? It looks better than a drone shot. I'm 100% with you, man. Yeah, Yep. Anyway, get those helicopters up there, baby. Let's talk about the visual look of this movie, Brad. I think if there is one thing that is just staggering about this movie, it's how well shot it is. I don't know if I'm with you, Bob. Like, like, not in the sense that it is poorly shot. I thought that there were multiple, you know, like the tracking shot you just talked about, the Dutch angle of of drunk Ingrid Bergman looking at Cary Grant. You know that, like, there are scenes in the movie that I enjoy, but overall, it felt like pretty standard fare for the 40s to me.

50:04 Like the scene where she's driving drunk and there's like a fake background, you know what I mean? Like that. That reminded me of to catch a thief. There's the moment where, well, not even just a moment. There's many times where they're like sitting in a restaurant or a cafe and everything behind them is like, you know, quote, UN quote, green screen, like there's enough of things like that. But I was just kind of like, yeah, this feels like it's of its time. That's a fair point, and those are especially prevalent in the first half of the movie. And I don't like it. Almost makes me wonder, like, I wish I could see the shooting schedule on this because it feels like some of this stuff was rushed. But then when you get to the back half of the movie.

50:46 That camera is like, Hitchcock makes such good use of closeups in this movie, and you don't get a ton of really close closeups until the tension starts to ratchet. And then it's like, yeah, when Bergman starts to figure out what's going on. There's closeups on her face. There's closeups on the mom. There's closeups on Claude Rains. The first time that she's trying to hide the key from him. And she like, he's like kissing the palms of her hands. And then she throws her arms around him. It cuts to a closeup like that's. It's such a good shot. And he makes this really claustrophobic environment by continuing to move the camera closer and closer to people as the movie winds down. And so I think, like, the actual camera work is awesome. But you're right.

51:26 There's like these weird rear projection moments throughout the movie that look not just fake by our standards, but like, even in 1946, I feel like there are people in the audience that were pointing at it and saying, huh, did you not have the budget to just like, right. Put a beach in the background? Right. Exactly. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm with you. I think for me, if I could speak more generally, just on the movie as a whole, the last like 20 minutes of this film worked pretty well for me. Like, once Claude Raines realizes she's a spy, he talks about his predicament with his mom and they decide to poison her from there to the end of the film.

52:06 I'm, I'm in. I'm, I'm locked in. I'm enjoying it. I think that it it has a little bit of a anti climactic ending, but overall I was, I was locked in, really enjoyed the last 20 minutes. And like you said, I think the cinematography does a big part in that because it becomes more dynamic. He's more active with the tension that he creates through editing and through camera work. I just wish he had done more of it throughout. All right, Brad. Well, I think it's time for us to get to our last segment of the day, which we call, let's make it a double. We're near the end of the episode, so thanks for listening to the film and whiskey show. Let's ever know the film with this one, even if it's struggling.

52:51 It's a final segment of the day. Now let's make it a double. Let's make it a double is the part of the show where we pick a movie to pair up with this one to make the perfect double feature? Brad, I'm curious to know what you would consider a quote UN quote perfect double feature since you didn't like this movie. Or are you going to go somewhere that's like, this will redeem the pair? Or are you going to thematically pair it up with another movie that you don't like and just make a miserable night for yourself? And while you think about how to do that, Brad, I'm going to go ahead and jump in with mine. I think an easy one would be to Catch a thief, because it's a movie that we're not totally in love with. It's Cary Grant. It's Alfred Hitchcock. It's a romance and some, you know, espionage as well. I think I'm going to go with a movie that I really liked from the mid 2000s called The American. This is a George Clooney movie set in I think Italy and it's a very slow moving spy espionage movie as well. That really leans into the romance aspect to go along with the spy stuff.

53:52 I think it's a fun pairing. I actually like that movie a lot better than I like this movie. And you get the modern day Cary Grant with George Clooney. So I'm going to pair it up with the American Bob. I'm not going to lie, I am struggling to think of a good pairing for this film and and not necessarily just because I didn't care for this film. There's stuff that worked for me in the film. I think that because I want more people to see it, I think I'll pair it with Charade. I think that Charade nails the thriller aspects way better. I think it nails the comedy aspects that never come across in this film way better. I think the Charade is just a a dag on good movie, so you don't have to watch Notorious, just go watch Charade.

54:37 The covert anti double. I love it. Let's make it a single by just eliminating this movie and watching another one instead. I love it, dude. All right, so I picked the American Brad Pitt charade. Let's give this movie some final scores. And Brad, I know that it sounds like I have been really crapping on this movie. I'm telling you, I think the last half of this movie. But you know, I would call the last 40 minutes we're almost perfect for me. Like movie making wise, I think that Hitchcock is really at the top of his game once he decides this is going to be a straight thriller. It's like a nine and a half for me in the back half of the movie and it's like a four in the first half. And so when I finished it, I was like, man, I think that he landed the plane so well that I might give this movie an 8 out of 10 overall.

55:24 And as I've been talking with you about it, I'm like, all right, it's probably not an 8, but I do think that. In the balance of things, I enjoyed it a lot more than I didn't. So I'm going to give it a 7 1/2 out of 10. Yeah, I I think that this is an enjoyable film. Like I I enjoyed Cary Grant. I enjoyed Claude Rains. I enjoyed Ingrid Bergman. I I think they all gave pretty solid performances. I'm going to put the blame here on Hitchcock. I I just don't think that he tells a compelling story and I think that the script kind of suffers a lot and it and it causes the actors to suffer as well. So I'll give it a six out of 10, Bob, not not something I'd be coming back to anytime soon. Not that you're going to pick one of the other in real life, but like this.

56:10 Or to catch a thief? Oh, that's hard. I think I'd go with this. I think this one had more intrigue and more inventive camera work. And I just like Ingrid Bergman better than I like Grace Kelly. So like this one. For me is the clear winner between the two. I think that I find To Catch a Thief to be a much more beautiful film looking, but overall I would say Notorious is probably the better film. Well, Brad, there you have it. I'm coming out to a 7 1/2. You're coming out to a six on a movie that people seem to generally really like. So if you've seen Notorious, I'd love to hear from you, because it seems like it worked better for you than it did for us. Let us know what you think on our social medias Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube at Filmwhiskey or jump onto our discord.

57:01 We are on there every single day having a conversation with you guys about movies, whiskey, then the world at large. So join the conversation. You can find a link to our discord at the end of every single one of our show notes. Next week we're getting back on track because we're finishing this season with four absolute bangers, and it starts with perhaps Hitchcock's most inventive movie, 1940 Eight's Rope. So join us for that next week. Until then, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.