Reputedly Hollywood's top-salaried scenarist, Ben Heeht, has turned out both his money's worth and yours in the slick, competent seript of "Notorious." Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant act with a skill that at times flare into brilliance, and the whole thing, being a spy story, is enhanced on end by Alfred Hitchcock's direction.

As for the already classic love scenes, some will find them highly instructive, while other will just be overpowered. But nobody will deny that, with the exception of the Joel McCrra-Jean Arthur neeking in "The More the Merrier" a few years back, they are the best of their kind ever filmed. In addition, the first, biggest, and meatiest of these shows dramatic technique at its best, for, its local pictorial merits to the side, it is also an indispensable and cleverly contrived part of the plot's development.

Claude Rains, probably the best character actor in movies, plays perfectly a South American link in an international carted. Miss Bergman, in reality an American spy, marries him in order to help Grant louse up the eartel's illegal workings, and the story of how she does it is complete with the usual sceret meetings, posionings, steny-faced villains with German accents, and uranium ore. But under Hitchcock-Heeht control it comes out fine and seems as if you had never seen it all before.