North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) (Patreon)

North by Northwest: a review by Michael Sicinski

[ABOVE: Roger and Eve meet in the trees before the Climax]

The name of this film is North by Northwest and it is awesome. There is very little in this film that is not completely awesome. There was this really bad-ass scene where the protagonist, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is in the middle of some farmland and all of a sudden this dude flying a crop-dusting plane starts dive-bombing him and shooting from the plane. It is thrilling and visually captivating and just generally awesome. 

There is also a final showdown between Thornhill and his secret agent girlfriend (Eva Marie Saint) (on the one side) and the devious spy baddie Vandamm (James Mason) and his right hand man Leonard (a young Martin Landau) (on the other side). This climactic sequence takes place on the front of Mount Rushmore. They are climbing down the face of the monument and trying not to fall, but also not to get shot. It is really intense. 

Although the whole movie was really, really good, I have a feeling that these two scenes -- the murder plane and the Battle on President Heads -- may go down in History as two of the most insanely awesome pieces of movie ever shot in the movies.

[ABOVE: Alfred "Hitch" Hitchcock making his Trademark cameo at the start of the film]

North by Northwest was directed by the British-American filmatist Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock had already made a significant number of really cool and successful films before he made North by Northwest. Some of these films include The Rope (1948), There Are Strangers on the Train (1951), That Rear Window (1954), and The Vertigo (1958). These are all awesome films HOWEVER there is a unique kind of awesomeness to North by Northwest. That is because it is essentially the formalist exercise by the director (Alfred "Hitch" Hitchcock) who is at the Top of His Game in everyone's opinion. He is such a master of his craft that he can simply showboat and have a good time and it is the total masterpiece. (Sometimes "Hitch" has been referred to as the "Master of Suspense.")

The film starts out with these awesome rectilinear graphic opening titles by opening titles innovator Saul Bass. They use moving type to emphasize the harsh facades of 1950s New York following the ascendancy of International Style architecture. This idea is repeated when "Hitch" shows Roger entering the United Nations Building, which is silhouetted against the sky and looks like a futuristic tombstone.

But what is also interesting about North by Northwest is that Alfred Hitchcock does not suggest that the country is safer or more "pure" than the modern city. The dangers of New York are about equal to the crop dusting terror, so open spaces are just as sinister as the Big City. This connection between isolation and modernism is cemented in the final sequence at Vandamm's swanky home. The association of modern architecture with decadence has been discussed by Thom Andersen in his documentary film Los Angeles Plays with Itself, and this carries through in North by Northwest, where the super rich villain lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright-esque cliffside home at the top of Mount Rushmore.

[ABOVE: just a hot chick reading a magazine on a train, no dude in my "compartment"]

Hitchcock is also very interested in modern transit in North by Northwest. A lot of the action in the middle of the picture takes place on a passenger train going between New York and Chicago. It is on the train that Roger meets FBI informant Eve Kendall (although he does not know she is working for the FBI at this point). Their interactions on the train seem to represent the thrill and also the alienation of modern travel. Roger is helped out of a jam by Eve, and then sees her again in the dining car. She pays a porter to seat Roger with her, so she can basically say, "hey dude, I have a sleeper car and I really want to fuck you." And while Roger should have thought "wow, this chick is pretty forward for 1959, and while I totally dig it, maybe something is amiss in this situation," he instead "risks it all" for a hot night with Eve.

This duplicity suggests that we cannot trust strangers on a train (see what "Hitch" did there?) but also that the anonymity of modern American life is exciting and offers new possibilities. Like, a woman can be all "hey big boy come up and see me sometime" on a cross country train because who will even know? There is a kind of feminism in Hitchcock's depiction of Eve, but it is also complicated, because she is sometimes in control and other times in danger. She is a "round character" in the sense that we keep learning new things about her. But she is not the usual "femme fatale," since she is not a schemer, just someone in a shitty situation.

The final shot of North by Northwest is very funny. The movie ends with Roger and Eve, either just married or about to be. And they are in the sleeping car on the way back to New York and getting ready to fuck each other again. At this moment, Hitchcock cuts to a shot of the train entering a tunnel. Which is very clever (it implies that Cary Grant's penis is entering Eva Marie Saint's "tunnel" or vagina) but also so amazingly obvious as to show that "Hitch" is just fucking around and having fun. And that is the main point of North by Northwest, I think: just having a good time in a very tightly controlled, meticulous kind of way. In conclusion I would recommend North by Northwest to anyone who enjoys old movies or just watching people having a good time while trying not to die. ***** (five stars, highest rating)