North by Northwest (1959) – Classic Hitchcock
All clickable links in red
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Genre: Spy thriller
Time: 2 Hours 16 minutes
Cast: Cary Grant. Eva Marie Saint. James Mason. Martin Landau.
Platform: Amazon Prime Rent
As mentioned in my post on Notorious (see here), Alfred Hitchcock made 11 spy movies, which were marketed as suspense thrillers. Hitchcock’s films are known for being multi-dimensional and packed with hidden meanings that send people scrambling for psychological books and treatises.
North by Northwest makes no such claim. It is a straightforward “the man on run hounded by both sides” type thriller. The 39 Steps (1939), Saboteur (1942) preceded North By Northwest and we see some touches of these two classics in this film.
Roger O Thornhill (Cary Grant) describes himself as an advertising executive who supports a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders. During a meeting with some clients, the name Mr. Kaplan is called out. Thornhill reaches out to the waiter for something else but two watching thugs think he is Kaplan and kidnap him. They take him to one Mr. Philip Vandamm (James Mason) who posing as Mr. Townsend , questions him about many things which Thornhill doesn’t know. Finally, he is then force-fed liquor and kept in a car which he crashes into a police vehicle. His mother bails him out next day. With the police, he returns to the same mansion where he had been taken the day before and sees a wholly different set of people, except for the housekeeper who recognizes him. The police shrug it off as a case of too much drinking. He then goes to the UN Building in New York to meet the real Mr. Townsend who is killed. Thornhill gets the blame and is on the run.
He goes to New York Grand Central Station where a mysterious blonde woman Eve (Eva Marie Saint) hides him in his compartment. Next morning she gives him instructions where to go and what to do. Thornhill goes from one dangerous adventure to another without knowing why or what. Meanwhile CIA officer ‘Professor’ (Leo G Caroll), who is monitoring the situation, instructs everyone to keep quiet and do nothing, lest they endanger their real Kaplan embedded in Vandamm’s group.
A fun filled Roller coaster is the right way to describe the film. According to some reports, “Hitch” claimed he aimed to produce a comedy free from the symbolic interpretations often linked to his work. Perhaps his idea of fun is to show the subtle homosexual undertones between Vandamm and his ‘heavy’ Leonard (Martin Landau), or the sexually charged banter between the main couple.
Eg: When Eve removes Thornhill’s jaded jacket, he complains;
Thornhill: When I was a small boy, I would never allow my mother to touch or undress me
Eve: Well, you are a big boy now.
The script is like a popcorn machine that crackles with wit and energy in every scene.
Eg : When Thornhill , wearing dark glasses, attempts to buy a ticket at the railway station, the ticket clerk who has his photo taped below his desk, asks him:
Clerk: “Something wrong with your eyes, buddy”?
Thornhill: “yes. They are sensitive to questioning”
The wonderful locations like the UN building in New York, The Mount Rushmore Monument, etc also help in creating some great scenes. The crop-dusting plane attack doesn’t have any dialogue; yet we can feel Thornhill’s terror as he tries to evade the airborne attack. Many other movies have mimicked and copied it many times. (Think of any movie where the hero or the lead couple experience an aerial attack and you know it’s a nod or inspiration from this scene).
The climax set near the Mount Rushmore monument is truly one of its kind; it is perhaps a cheeky self-tribute to his Saboteur (1942) where the climax is set on top of The Statue of Liberty.
Bernard Hermann was Hitchcock’s frequent musical collaborator and his bouncy whimsical score enhances the proceedings. Listen to this wonderful theme music that recurs time and again throughout the film; the video has been wonderfully done to show some of the key scenes.
All the performances are outstanding, but James Mason truly shines as the smooth Vandamm. His smooth burr contrasts Grant’s loud protests and shouts throughout the movie as a bewildered man, caught in events beyond his making and control.
Trivia: The film was copied in Hindi as Inaam Dus Hazaar (1987) with Sanjay Dutt and Meenakshi Seshadri in the lead roles. Here instead of Kaplan, it’s a “Kamal Malhotra” whom the bad guys are after and the hero is named Kamal Malhotra. It is a decent copy and if the unnecessary song and dances had been removed, it would have been excellent.
Script – 5 out of 5
Story – 4 out of 5
Direction – 5 out of 5
Photography – 5 out of 5
Total – 4.8 out of 5
Wow
Hi Rammesh,
Another crackling review! Thanks for the reference to the Bollywood version (Inaam Dus Hazaar), which I was not aware of.
Some interesting trivia/comments on this classic from ‘The Art of Alfred Hitchcock’ by Donald Spoto:
“Not the least of its prophetically cool stance towards politics is that it calmly locates treachery equally on “our side” as on “theirs” – and this during the Eisenhower years when American chauvinism galloped at full pace”.
“The opening scenes also establish the basic geography of the film: Thornhill exits the C.I.T. building on Madison Avenue, heads north and then enters a taxi heading west on Sixtieth Street. Henceforth the entire film moves in a northwesterly direction (except for the necessary side trip to Glen Cove, the residence of the Russian delegation in the 1950s). From New York to Mount Rushmore via Chicago, the action then remains consistently in a northwesterly direction (with, appropriately, a flight on North-west Airlines from Chicago. The final choice for the film’s title maybe well have been inspired, therefore, by Hamlet: “I am but mad north-northwest,”, for as Hitchcock insisted, this is a fantasy of the absurd”.
“… the seductive, deceptive and finally alarmingly sympathetic Eve, is associated throughout with the dangerous number thirteen. She’s in car 3901 on the Twentieth Century Limited, and in room 463 at the Ambassador East in Chicago; the structurally obsessive Hitchcock loved little jokes like this, for the digits of course add in each case to 13”
—–
Also worth mentioning – the presence of the great British actor, James Mason. (just watched his 1982, ‘The Verdict’ last night. As finely as he acted, Paul Newman is no match for the majestic Mr. Mason)
Lastly, you have led us to Mount Rushmore with your review of North by Northwest. I have to check your earlier blogs to see if there is a review of Saboteur (Statue of Liberty) and the non-Hitchcock ‘The Parallax View’ (Seattle’s Space Needle).
Of course, these are only American locations. Outside, there is Westminster Cathedral in ‘Foreign Correspondent’ and many other famous locales, especially in the Bond and Mission Impossible films.
Thanks,
Robin
Thanks Robin.
I have mentioned only one movie of Hitch earlier – Notorious. Most of the films are difficult to get on OTT as they still have immense repeat value. I have most if not all of them on DVDs – courtesy earlier US visits ; last year it was at Half Price Books at Waco from their gigantic “old DVD’ section . Maybe you will get lucky there 🙂 .
As for Saboteur, it too is a “Man on the run ” movie where only the heroine (naturally) believes the hero while he is hunted by the Police and the Bad Guys – those nasty Nazis (or their supporters).
Spoto’s book – which I read first in 1982 courtesy a visit to the local USIS library – is an exercise in how to write an essential filmography without being too technical or fawning ! Naturally I bought the book some years later !
Parallax View – Conspiracy thriller at its best . Remember this was a post-Watergate movie . Would this be possible in today’s fractious atmosphere?
KVR