"Notorious" (1946)

After watching Hitchcock's "Notorious" for a second or possibly third time, I'm left with precisely the same impression as last time: the only sympathetic character in the film is Alex Sebastian, trapped between an overbearing mother, a much younger wife who is playing him for a fool with her American Secret Service handler, and the confederates who want to see him dead for being fool enough to fall in love with a traitress.
Of course it doesn't help that Claude Rains can act the socks off Cary Grant, and that the designated romance is between two unlikeable characters...