Hitchcock Direction Perfection

I've seen Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959) at least four or five times, but never from the absolute beginning. Whenever I'm fortunate enough to catch it on TCM, it's already a good 30 minutes into the film (if you've seen it, somewhere around the part where Cary Grant's character makes his visit to the United Nations in New York). So a few weeks ago, when I found it on dvd, I decided I'd better buy the film for my own collection. I was finally able to watch the whole film, start to finish, without interruption, and what a difference it made.

While I had high respect for the artistry of the film beforehand, the opening added so much to my understanding of the plot and the overall reception of the film. The title sequence alone, with the stirring Bernard Herrmann score and unique graphics, effectively heightened my anticipation for the actual plot to begin. [Side note: If you caught Google's recent search engine homage to artist Saul Bass, you might notice the opening of the video was a recreation of Bass' North By Northwest opening title sequence.] There's also another quick surprise during the title sequence: Hitchcock's trademark cameo appearance (he appears in almost all of his films creating what I call the "Where's Hitch?" effect, substitute Hitch for Waldo). See if you can spot the master of suspense making his way around New York in this clip....Okay, it won't be too hard.

Here's the opening of the film:

Cary Grant very convincingly plays Mr. Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive whose life spins into chaos when out of nowhere he is kidnapped, poisoned, and framed for murder by a group of criminals. While on the run, he is then curiously befriended by a beautiful and mysterious woman Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), and thereafter continues to have his life repeatedly threatened, unable to rely on the protection of law enforcement. A nice choice of casting resulted in the chief villain, Phillip Vandamm, being played by James Mason, and Leo G. Carroll (a common actor in Hitchcock films like Suspicion, Spellbound, Rebecca, etc.) playing the chief government spy known as "the professor".



Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Alfred Hitchcock, and James Mason

 

The beginning of the film is crucial to providing context for the relationships that form between the players, and it sets up a fuzzy picture that becomes clearer as the story progresses. Phillip Vandamm (Mason), and his conspirators pursue Thornhill, believing him to be a man named Kaplan. Their attempts to kill Thornhill, despite his insistence that he is not Kaplan, indicates that they have not been in contact with Kaplan before. Early on, it becomes evident that Mr. Kaplan is not on good terms with Vandamm, and may be threatening his illegal activities. Thornhill, eager to absolve himself, sets out find Mr. Kaplan as he runs from the law (for the framed murder) and Vandamm's men. Meanwhile, the government spies are aware of who Vandamm is, and recognize the dangerous position Thornhill is in. However, Vandamm is being monitored by the government via an insider, and any government interference to help Thornhill (in effect, now a decoy) could threaten their access to information.

Typical of Hitchcock, the details and connections in the plot are carefully woven together and slowly unveiled following the epic, iconic, climactic corn field, crop duster scene all the way until the last few scenes of the film. Having seen the movie the whole way through now, I would recommend that if you haven't seen the film before, you wait till you have a chance to watch it from beginning to end. It will make the experience that much better, because while each scene is a piece of art in and of itself, the masterpiece of Hitchcock's creation won't be fully realized unless you've put all the pieces of the puzzle together yourself and experienced the suspense mounting along the way.

Enjoy this video from the TCM Classic Film Festival, with Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau, two of the actors from North by Northwest, discussing their experiences working on the film with expert film historian Robert Osborne.

A quick before and after: