Revisiting North by Northwest for the AFI Project

From December 30, 2008:

What's the AFI project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx

North by Northwest is on the following AFI lists:

The Original Top 100 (#40)
100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies (#4)
The Revised Top 100 (#55)
10 Top 10's (#7 Mystery)

I bought North by Northwest on DVD for this project, but I already owned it on videocassette (the test was passed long ago). For me, so far, this and Rear Window are my two favorite Hitchcock movies (and are ranked very closely on the Original AFI list, so stay tuned). I don't know if I can say I'm still "thrilled" by this film in the traditional sense of the word - I already know the twists and turns and what to expect, as I've seen it a few times at least. Thus, I suppose North by Northwest loses some of its luster on too many repeat viewings. Still, as expected from Hitchcock, this film is constructed quite masterfully, and even if my heart doesn't pound quite as fervently as it did when I first watched it, the film still plays out as a tight, subtle romantic comedy/drama as well as a mystery that makes one laugh, cringe, stew, jump, and ultimately swoon with the best of them.

Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an innocuous advertising executive in New York City, who plans to meet some clients at a the Plaza Hotel and the famous Oak Room for business and then take his mother to the theater. The trouble is, after coincidentally being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the hotel page calls for a "George Kaplan," some thugs surreptitiously kidnap Roger at gunpoint and take him to the mansion of a mysterious and sinister man (James Mason), who identifies himself as Lester Townsend and insists that Roger is George, a federal agent who may have some information about his less than kosher activities. The man tries to have Roger killed after his insistent pleas that he is not George Kaplan, and the thugs see fit to fill Roger with bourbon and help him drive off a cliff. Roger is able to escape his fate through pure, unadulterated luck but not before being picked up by local police and charged with driving while intoxicated. It's after this that Roger, trying to escape from this surreal nightmare, also tries to prove his innocence by ultimately confronting the real Lester Townsend at the United Nations, where Townsend works. Before Roger or Mr. Townsend can learn more about each other and these strange happenings, Townsend gets a knife in his back, and Roger is accused of the murder and becomes a wanted fugitive. Following the bread crumbs left behind allegedly by the real George Kaplan, Roger manages to hide aboard a train headed for Chicago, where he meets the cool and careful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who hides him from the police--twice--and on the last occasion, Eve and Roger share her compartment. Romantic sparks fly, despite Roger's precarious situation; Eve even seems willing to help Roger find Kaplan and arranges for Roger to meet him on an abandoned rural bus route. It's at this point that Roger is attacked by a low-flying crop-duster airplane in one of the most famous scenes in all of film history. Roger escapes and ultimately re-locates Eve, only to find out that the sinister man's name is Phillip VanDamm, and that Eve seems to be "with" VanDamm, though from her reaction upon seeing Roger, it's clear that everything is more complicated than it seems.

Whew. As plot summaries go, I needed more help from the Spout page's many plot synopses than normal, for North by Northwest is one of the more twisty, turny, thickly laid out plots I've ever seen, from Hitchcock or anyone else. As twisty and turny as it is, though, as a story, it's also completely satisfying in so many respects. Sometimes, Roger's harrowing nightmare of mistaken identity and deception takes so many tributaries, it feels surreal, even stream of consciousness, but in classic Hitchcock fashion, everything makes sense by the end of the film.

If you're a film fan, I probably don't really need to get into why this film is so great - it would just be redundant. But, for you not so filmy fans, this is a film that is truly a fantastic sum of its truly great parts. The performances are great. I've tried to imagine some of Hitch's other favorite leading men in the role of Thornhill, such as Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck or someone, and none of the options satisfy me or my imagination, though I've read that Jimmy Stewart was originally attached to play a version of the Thornhill character. Grant could play too cool, befuddled, suave, snarky, mildly chafed, and downright acid seemingly effortlessly and all at the same time, and he does so with such apparent glee in this film that it's hard not to connect to the Roger character right away. Plus, coupled with Hitch's trademark sense for letting certain events crawl under a viewer's skin before hitting them with the whammy, the combination of the direction and Grant's performance give North by Northwest its thriller cred - when Roger is abducted, so quietly and for seemingly no reason, it comes from left field, and Cary Grant's ability to play off Roger's coolly disaffected sarcasm while showing expressions of legitimate fear and confusion is unparalleled.

It helps that the dialogue as written is so snappy and smart, and then when Eva Marie Saint's Eve enters the picture, the chemistry and sexual tension are undeniable. Also, Saint walked the morally ambiguous line very well in her portrayal. You know, though, I've always found Roger and Eve's "love-making" scene a little awkward in this film. I'm not sure if it was the Hayes code at work or what, but especially during the first seduction scene in Eve's train compartment, the way he's holding her and vice versa is a little strange and strange enough that the love story here is the hardest part for me to buy, at least at first. I get over it quickly, however.

Hitch's masterful direction worked very well in conjunction with his cinematographer and art director. If the open country road that's deathly quiet until the farmer suggests that the crop duster is dusting where there aren't any crops, followed by the iconic plane-chase scene, doesn't do it for you, then how about using a convincing replica of Mount Rushmore with choice shots and angles of each presidential face while various members of the cast dangle from the presidents' visages precariously in the final cat-and-mouse sequence? No? Perhaps you prefer understated: the United Nations entryways? The aerial shots of NYC? And so on?

Where would Hitch be without Bernard Hermann to compose a dynamic and dynamite score for one of his movies? They were two peas in a pod, and Hermann's musical sensibilities added so much texture to his films. This score did not get ranked on the AFI scores list, while Psycho and Vertigo did. That's too bad, because as a violinist in the Michigan Pops Orchestra at the University of Michigan, when we played some Hermann selctions in an ode to old Alfred, I found North by Northwest so much more fun (with its string-heavy opening) than selections from the slow-moving Vertigo. Either way, it's such a unique sound used here and yet fits the helter skelter of this great picture perfectly.

My only eensy teensy minus against the near perfection of this film is the wham-bam-thank you ma'am nature of the ending. Then again, the segue is also cheekily perfect, so I don't actually mind too much, nor do I mind the tongue-in-cheek visual suggestion of the train entering the tunnel in the last shot. In fact, I'm still going to give this movie a 10 for being a masterpiece because I think it is a masterpiece, and it's one I enjoy more than Hitchcock's higher ranked film and previous entry, Psycho, only because it has that cynical yet quirky sense of humor that characterized many of Hitchcock's films, with the exception of a few such as Psycho.

In short (too late), North by Northwest is a sure bet, especially if you've never seen it before, and it deserves to be ranked among the AFI's greatest. I might not have put it quite so high on the thrillers list, except that the sheer bravado and cross-country scope of it coupled with the sharply veering twists and turns are very thrilling, so I'm not quibbling much. Plus, it really is a superb mystery and a great film to pull out and watch just for fun, for a giggle or a jump, therefore achieving that rare balance of art and entertainment to which, as I've said, all films really should aspire.