001 Notes on Hitchcock North by Northwest

NORTH BY NORTHWEST

The following are my notes on watching this film:

DESCRIBED AS: Action Adventure with Romance – a model for James Bond films.

Filmed 1959 – end of Hollywood Conventional System.

Hitch pushes the envelope through:

Sex

• Sex on train - “I never make love on an empty stomach”
• Homosexual Leonard - “It's my women's intuition”
• Obvious Freudian ending

Subversive view on Govt:

• CIA shows a callous disregard for citizen's lives.
• Van Damm shown to be capable of love, cares for welfare of family and employees.
• Mt Rushmore scene - the image of American citizens being threatened while the presidents themselves look on impassively.

KEY PEOPLE

Hitch – At his peak, able to demand and get whatever he wants. Surprisingly subversive, 'modern'.

Cary Grant – plays Thornhill. Jimmy Stewart wanted the role but Hitchcock obviously considered him not up to it.

Eve Marie Saint – Eve. Sexually aggressive. Hitch wanted her, studio wanted Syd Charisse, we know who won.

James Mason – Van Damm.

Martin Landau – Leonard.

Several uncredited actors were victims of McCarthy trials, yet Hitchcock was brave enough to hire them.

Bernard Hermann: awsome music.

Ernest Lehman: screen writer – collaborative process with Hitch.

Saul Bass – titles.

TITLES 

• Come from nowhere and disappear.
• Abstract background.
• Urgent/busy music.
• Image dissolves to a busy street (Madison Ave)
• Chaos as women ague over taxi, Hitch misses bus.
• Our hero launches into the chaos but is in control.

PLOT

Very complex

An advertising executive (Thornhill) is mistaken for a spy (Kaplan). A spy ring attempts to murder him. He escapes and searches for the spy while the spy ring continues to hunt him. His investigations lead him to the UN where he is implicated in the assassination of a diplomat. Now he is being pursued by the police also! But he continues to pursue Kaplan. He takes a train to Boston and is seduced by Eve, who gives him refuge from the police. In Boston, we discover she is working for the spies and lures him to his doom in a remote cornfield. This is the famous 'crop duster scene'.

Later, we discover that Kaplan doesn't exist, he was a fiction invented by the CIA to occupy the spies. Thornhill sometimes assumes Kaplan's identity for his own purposes.

We are treated to a subversive auction scene, the iconic Mt Rushmore chase scene, many plot twists before the end.

REPEATED MOTIFS

Theatre

• Thornhill had theatre tickets when he was abducted by the spies.
• Van Damm makes theatrical references every time.
  • Auction room.
  • Hitch jokes about Actor's Studio.

Existentialism

• Advertising
• ROT
• Kaplan doesn't exist.

Art

• U.N building interior and exterior.
• Auction scene.
• MacGuffin (Hitchcock's term for an object used for progressing the plot) uses a pre-Columbian figurine

Changing vehicles

Taxi, train, ute, police car, bus, ambulance, plane.

Hamlet

• Title of the film
• Thornhill's relationship with his mum.
• Play within a play – auction scene.

Danger from heights

Car hanging off cliff, hospital ledge, climbing on Van Damm's house, Mt Rushmore.

WARDROBE

Grant's suit, so good that it is almost a character in itself.  One of the most famous pieces of wardrobe in movie history.

Eve's dresses 1:17:10

Eve's hat in the woods scene before Mt Rushmore. 1:43:10

VISUAL STYLE

Hitch uses lots of POV shots

• Puts audience in character's position, we only know what the character knows.
• Builds empathy with character.

Lots of high angle shots.

SUSPENSE

Hitch swings us between surprise and suspense.

Suspense achieved by giving the viewer more information than the character.

Sometimes we only know what Thornhill knows.

Sometimes we know much more than him.

Sometimes we know more than him but less than other characters.

Example: Crop duster scene. 1:03:30

Hitch wanted to subvert the traditional assassination scene where the victim stands on a dark street corner under a lamp post before he is shot from a moving car. In this scene we have the opposite of a busy city. Thornhill is out of his element. Death is coming, but neither he nor us know how.

Lack of sound makes the battle seem abstract, emotionally unorchestrated.

Notice switching between mid shots of Grant and long shot POV as he waits in the sun.

CAMERA TECHNIQUES

Example: UN scene. 33:20

Begins with extreme longshots of Thornhill entering the building. Only when he enters the lobby (ls) can we confirm that it's him. At the desk, cuts to medium shot to centre on dialogue between T and receptionist then pans slowly back to the lobby to villain and focuses in on him to establish the respective positions of T and the villain. Cross cutting between the villain and T tells the viewer that the actions are happening at the same time. Conversation between T and Townsend begins in medium shot with no camera movement. But as the characters focus on each other, we have over the shoulder shots back and forth matching the dialogue. This ends when they finally get down to business, we switch back to the two men in mid shot and Townsend asks “what exactly do you want?”. It is only then that the exciting music starts. Hitch uses montage to emphasise the dramatic situation. Camera cuts to people sitting at a table, then to three secretaries as they stand and lean forward. Scene ends with extreme ls birds eye view, which is an impossible shot for camera.

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