d he is always looked at as pathetic. Hitchcock cast Alex to physically be very small. This masks the fact that he is constantly being dominated by his mother, Mrs. Sebastian. Devlin is identified as the hard-boiled action guy: "When I don't love you, I'll let you know," he says followed by: "Actions speak louder than words." Devlin has a vast well of vulnerability, and hurt. As he is able to say only much later in the film, in a flash of new awareness: "I was a fat-headed guy full of pain." When Devlin finally reveals his identity to Alicia and offers her some unspecified work as a government agent spying on her father's colleagues, Alicia's first reaction is to feign indifference as though she could care less about politics, or her father's criminal legacy. But Devlin knows better, he has a secret recording on hand of Alicia arguing patriotically with her father. Inevitably, he got her hooked. The pair is then sent by the government to Rio, Brazil. There exists intense romantic and sexual tension between them as they await their orders but, finally, something has to give, and it does. The first apartment scene, as they plan for dinner, is the peak of their romance in the film. What the lovers do not yet know is the actual assignment that the government demands. Alicia will need to sleep her way into the inner-sanctum of a collection of scheming Nazis, via the bed of someone whom she knows from the past, Alex. There are thriller and action elements in Notorious. But it is far more weighted towards the romance and melodramatic emotional end. One observes the relationship between man
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