Sigourney Weaver picks her all-time favourite movie scene: “Such a hard picture”

Sigourney Weaver is one of those actors who became an icon early in her career and has never quite managed to outrun that character. It’s a testament to her skills as an actor, however, that she still managed to nab no fewer than three Academy Award nominations along the way for three very different films. 1979’s Alien was only Weaver’s third movie, but as Ripley, the steely astronaut who battles a mysterious extraterrestrial parasite, she gave a career-defining performance.

It wasn’t just that Ripley was one of the few female protagonists in an action movie; it was the actor’s quietly powerful performance. There was no hint of the final girl about her. She was simply a calm, collected force to be reckoned with. She reprised the role in three other films and earned an Oscar nomination for James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens.

Because of Ripley and her roles in Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest, and Avatar, Weaver is most frequently associated with science fiction. However, when asked to name her favourite movie scene during a 2011 interview with Movieline, she referenced a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

“One of my favourite movies would clearly be Notorious,” she said. “The scene where Cary Grant [visits Ingrid Bergman]. Just seeing how ill she is… to me, that was such a hard picture. Such a steely picture.”

Released in 1946 before the master of suspense transitioned into the gaudy hues of Technicolor, Notorious stars Ingrid Bergman as Alicia, the daughter of a Nazi spy, and Cary Grant as Devlin, a US government agent who enlists her help to infiltrate her father’s inner circle. They fall in love, but their romance is complicated by Alicia’s engagement to one of her father’s associates. Toward the end of the film, Alicia’s new husband realises that she and Devlin have been conspiring, and he begins to poison her.

The scene that Weaver described takes place towards the end of the movie when Devlin finally confesses his love for Alicia. It is a conspicuously tough movie for Hitchcock, who often preferred cosy murder and witty banter to the cruel complications of a romance built around exiled fascists. It is a particularly unusual film for Grant as well, who stuck almost exclusively to lighthearted comedies and crime capers. He played two very different morally dubious characters in Hitchcock films, Notorious and 1941’s Suspicion, and both contain some of his best work.

For Weaver, the moment that Devlin and Alicia reunite is the most memorable part of the film because of the coldness and cruelty that has come before it. “There’s this amazing soft centre in the picture which is that she’s almost dead and he clasps her in his arms and talks to her,” she said. “It’s like the whole movie turns into a different organism.”

Grant would later say that Bergman was one of his favourite co-stars along with Grace Kelly, Deborah Kerr, and Audrey Hepburn. Their chemistry is palpable in the film, and it remains an under-appreciated classic of Hitchcock’s filmography.

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