North by Northwest

Media:	DVD
Directed by:	Alfred Hitchcock
Starring:	Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint
Release date:	29 August, 2000
List price:	~~$19.97~~
Our price:	that is 100% off!

North by Northwest

Average rating: Stars

Not Hitchcock's finest.

I've watched Hitchcock's Rope, Rear Window, Psycho and Vertigo. Honestly, North by Northwest is perhaps the least bright among all. It doesn't have the suspense of Psycho, camera-work of Vertigo, smart setup as Rear Window and witty banter as Rope. In fact, with the blockbuster movie like that, I'm surprised at the slow moving storyline, even the explosion of the airplane was not thrilling.

I'm not going to give a summary of the movie since others have done it aptly, but there are flaws in the movies which they fail to point out; the most obvious one is that the movie did not once attempt to explain why the thugs think that Cary Grant is an FBI agent. Sure, it was a case of mistaken identity, but why him in particular?

Also, there were some parts, which are unneccessary at all, and would not suffer if they were edited out; all the better they should be edited out because it would only slow the pace of the over-2-hour movie. Such scenes, I can easily think of, are the scenes with Cary Grant waiting in the open fields, as if he was cruising.

Hitchcock seems to want to play with the Oedipal relationship between Cary Grant's character and his mother but this doesn't seem to work out. The relationship has only slight undertones of Oedipal, yet it offers no insight to Grant's character development and it doesn't carry through the movie. The mother disappears 1/3 through the movie, as if there wasn't such a character at all. The Oedipal relationship is, in another words, quite useless to the development of the plot.

Not Hitchcock's finest.

North by Northwest - Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint

Distillate of Hitchcock

Lighter than VERTIGO or REAR WINDOW, lacking in that obsessive erotic intensity -- perhaps because the film, like master spy George Kaplan or the monogram of Roger O. Thornhill, has nothing at its core -- NORTH BY NORTHWEST succeeds as a tour de force, a series of set pieces that express the exuberance of an artist who has surpassed his own limits. The murder at the United Nations; the pas de deux of Roger and Eve in a sleeping compartment on the 20th Century Limited; the almost-silent cropdusting scene; Thornhill's shenanigans at the auction; the forest near Mount Rushmore; the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed jutting into the darkness; the chase over the presidents' faces -- one gets a certain pleasure from just NOTING each miniature masterpiece.

The title alludes to HAMLET, if I am not mistaken: "I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a hand-saw" (2.2.367-8).

Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint - North by Northwest

One of my favorites, it must be

Common language philosophers talk about "operant definitions" in that something is as it operates. While on the outset I never thought of North by Northwest earth-shattering by any means, it must be one of my favorites as I have seen it more often than any other movie I can think of, barring my known favorite - Being There.

Since the movie really snuck up on me as one of my all time favorites it is hard to say just what I like about it. It is a fast paced thriller, sure, but so are many other movies that don't qualify. It is alternatively funny, thrilling, suspenseful, and has good acting and, of course, excellent directing and artful cinematography.

Maybe it's all in a nutshell. The period of Hitchcock from Rope to N by NW all have worlds I'd like to live in, despite whatever "bad" thing is going on. I would just love to be in any one of the worlds created, the coloring, the pacing, the people - I'd love to be ROT, subtracting the spies. I'd love to live in the house on the cliff side, I'd love to "ride the train" with Eva Marie Saint. Similarly I'd love to be independently wealthy and living in the penthouse in Rope, or the curious tableau created for Rear Window, or on the Riviera in To Catch a Thief.

So I get drawn in every time. To be witty and urbane and bag hot babes is paid for with some spies and more spies. Hmmmmmm....maybe it is an even trade....