This took me by surprise. I was quite shocked! Was this kind of take charge woman a frequent thing in movies at the time? It feels very liberal for a 1957 film. All that talk about making love to a beautiful woman. Hes saying he want to fuchs her, right there! And women say there wasn't any strong female leads in movies!
She was smoking hot in any case. Looks a bit like scarlett Johansson
Yeah, but don't forget she was playing a part to lure him to his doom.
shareYeah, but don't forget she was playing a part to lure him to his doom.
Though it was one year later, with Psycho, that Hitchcock would really push the envelope of sexuality in American films by having Janet Leigh in a bra and John Gavin shirtless necking (post-sex, one might surmise) in the opening scene...North by Northwest set the pace by having Grant and Saint (with their clothes fully on) have a very frank talk ABOUT sex that, no doubt, set 1959 audience heads spinning...and other body parts tingling.
What's great about the scene is how both Roger AND Eve make frank sexual offers to each other; he's an experienced Lothario, but he's met his match here:
Roger: Whenever I meet a beautiful woman, I have to conceal the fact that I would like to make love to her.
Eve: Why would you conceal it?
Roger: Because she might find the idea objectionable.
Eve: Then again, she might not.
Boom. Roger's saying he'd like to make love to Eve. Boom. Eve says she would like that.
And we're off to the races.
Saint as Eve keeps her clothes on in all scenes of North by Northwest, but she strikes me as a 1959 forerunner to all the sexually accessible "Bond girls" about to hit American and international screens circa 1962 (from Dr. No on) and the bikini-clad and sexually available spy babes of the American spoofs like Dean Martin's Matt Helm series and James Coburn's two "Our Man Flint" films.
Though Hitchcock would show Janet Leigh in her underwear a few times in Psycho, and would allow for nude women in Frenzy...he really wasn't a "bikini babe" kind of filmmaker. He spoke over and over again about liking the idea of the "cool blonde" who keeps her clothes on and reveals ravenous sexual appetites as a surprise.
I don't think the Bond/Helm/Flint filmmakers felt the same way...but at least Eve Kendall set the stage for Bond girls to come.
And for a healthy sexuality in American females everywhere.
There's nothing "healthy" about her sexuality, at least not at first. She's seducing Thornhill because someone she's afraid of told her to. She's being used and abused, and it's actually pretty sick.
However, because Thornhill is played by Cary Grant, we can believe that she actually comes to see him as the answer to all her real-life difficulties and secret prayers! Jimmy Stewart wouldn't gave that effect on a girl like her, he'd just be a ... refuge at best.
There's nothing "healthy" about her sexuality, at least not at first.
---
Well, true. But all we can see -- at first reading of the interaction -- is a woman coming on to a man for a mutual sexual situation. Consensual, it looks. I say that looks healthy.
---
She's seducing Thornhill because someone she's afraid of told her to. She's being used and abused, and it's actually pretty sick.
---
Well, that was Hitchcock's game, a time or two. Notorious mainly -- Cary Grant agreeing to push Bergman into Rains' bed to get information! Here, there is indeed something sick to Vandamm "pimping out his girlfriend."
But remember: once Eve gets Roger to bedtime, she says "you're going to sleep on the floor." Evidently Vandamm's plan was NOT meant to include sex.
By sheer coincidence, I was watching "The Prize" the other day, a 1963 spy thriller written by Ernest Lehman. In a key sexy, scene, Diane Baker sexually comes on to Paul Newman in a Swedish nightclub:
Newman: Seems like bedtime for you.
Baker: (Sexily) I accept.
Baker had some sexual come-on dialogue with a pleased Newman before this point. Now they go upstairs to his hotel room, and she reveals her REAL intentions: to make him go to his room ALONE, so as not to get in any scandals during the Nobel Prize week(Newman's a winner). "You can thank me in the morning" she says, all schoolmarmish as she goes to her own room in the same hall.
You could say that, in both NXNW(with Eve) and The Prize (with Diane Baker), Ernest Lehman had it both ways for the Hays Code. The women promised all manner of sexual bliss, and then shut things down at the goal line.
Except I'm not sure that Eve Kendall DID that.
However, because Thornhill is played by Cary Grant, we can believe that she actually comes to see him as the answer to all her real-life difficulties and secret prayers! Jimmy Stewart wouldn't gave that effect on a girl like her, he'd just be a ... refuge at best
However, because Thornhill is played by Cary Grant, we can believe that she actually comes to see him as the answer to all her real-life difficulties and secret prayers! Jimmy Stewart wouldn't gave that effect on a girl like her, he'd just be a ... refuge at best.
---
Given how he looked in 1959, it remains ridiculous to me that James Stewart campaigned to play Thornhill. Had Cary Grant said no, I could see the role going to Rock Hudson, William Holden, Dean Martin or Tony Curtis before Stewart. MGM wanted Gregory Peck. Lehman WROTE the role, at first, for Frank Sinatra, but Hitchcock wouldn't work with Sinatra("He directs himself" noted Hitch...and he was known for ripping out script pages to move production along.)
And indeed, Eve is sent to "fake seduce" Thornhill...but she's up against Cary Grant. Probably changed her game plan...and made Vandamm furious(he REALLY wants Grant dead after that.)
"But remember: once Eve gets Roger to bedtime, she says "you're going to sleep on the floor." Evidently Vandamm's plan was NOT meant to include sex."
You know, the first time I saw this movie I was a teenager, young enough to believe that she actually wanted Thornhill to sleep on the floor! When I got older I realized she was saying it in a teasing, flirty way, and only said it because the censors of the time demanded that the scene end with the proprieties officially observed.
So it's not clear when she changed from seducing Thornhill under orders to realizing she had Cary Grant in front of her and this was the opportunity of a lifetime, but I hope it was early in the game. Yeah, there's a reason Stewart wasn't cast!
"But remember: once Eve gets Roger to bedtime, she says "you're going to sleep on the floor." Evidently Vandamm's plan was NOT meant to include sex."
--
You know, the first time I saw this movie I was a teenager, young enough to believe that she actually wanted Thornhill to sleep on the floor! When I got older I realized she was saying it in a teasing, flirty way, and only said it because the censors of the time demanded that the scene end with the proprieties officially observed.
---
Yes, probably, the line has been "written up that way": She says he is going to sleep on the floor to satisfy the Hays Code censors, but they just keep on kissing hard. They had sex.
And I'm just not sure myself.
In The Prize -- written much more clumsily and obviously by Lehman without Hitch's story editing -- it is clear that Diane Baker uses sexual come-ons to get Newman to his hotel room and then shut him down. In NXNW, EXACTLY what goes down between Eve and Roger overnight is teased and tantalized, but never really proved. Roger has that later line about Eve being the "(something) woman I ever spent the night on a train with." More teasing, more mixed signals.
In some ways, quite frankly, I valued the coming of the PG and R rating because filmmakers COULD spell it out: yes, the couple had sex. No, the couple didn't have sex. Enough with the obfuscation!
----
So it's not clear when she changed from seducing Thornhill under orders to realizing she had Cary Grant in front of her and this was the opportunity of a lifetime, but I hope it was early in the game.
---
Probably. The idiot here is James Mason, sending his woman to "fake seduce" CARY GRANT. Major miscalculation. Though Mason was obviously a cool hottie himself(with a voice as great as Grant's.)
No, in those days "make love" just meant courting, wining and dining, etc.
shareNo, in those days "make love" just meant courting, wining and dining, etc.
--
I agree that the term was used that way a lot back then...in Frank Sinatra songs as well as in the movies but...then why did the censors cut the line? Maybe they thought in juxtaposition to "on an empty stomach" it cut too close to the sexual connotation(which also was one of the uses.)
Hey, one year later, Marilyn Monroe appeared in a movie CALLED "Let's Make Love."
Which did SHE mean?