MovieChat Forums > North by Northwest (1959) Discussion > Death by crop duster: dumbest assassinat...

Death by crop duster: dumbest assassination idea ever

posted 10 years ago by You_R_A_Loser
20 replies | jump to latest

Hey we're sending thor hill out into the middle of nowhere....I know to kill him let's nail him with a crop duster...or try shooting him from a biplane with questionable handling characteristics

Simply genius

You know we could simply send a car over and snipe the guy

Nah a flying crop duster machine gunning him would be so much more discreet....

And the scene wheee the plane dives down to ram him....what a dumb idea...let me dive down my
plane a few feet from the ground so I can kill thornhill

[–] MonteCarloMan 10 years ago

Agreed, quite ludicrous. Seemed like something borrowed from the WWII era.

[–] rorysa 10 years ago

How did this ever become a revered film classic in the face of these brilliant criticisms?

[–] mddwbsst 10 years ago

I don't know, if a guy got shot in the middle of nowhere, don't you think they would wonder who shot him and why? Especially if he was a wanted murder?

On the other hand, if he seemingly accidentally gets killed by a crop duster flying to low, then it looks a bit less suspicious.

Still Hitchcock himself admitted it didn't really make much sense, but kept it in cause it was cool. And let face it spy films are meant to stretch your suspension of disbelief, even the more realistic ones.

[–] generalusgrant 10 years ago

The plots of most movies are implausible and asinine, haven't you figured that out by now? You think the plot of The Sting (best picture of 1973) isn't ludicrous? How about Pscyho? Every single plot of any James Bond movie is beyond belief idiotic... but who cares!? This is entertainment.

North by Northwest is one of the greatest and most beloved movies ever made. It's also highly ironic that the scene you're picking on (the crop duster scene), is one of the most iconic 5 minutes in film history. The assassination attempt may be ludicrous, but who the hell cares? Only someone with an extremely limited understanding of great movies would nit-pick this tiny facet of a brilliant and nearly flawless film.

[–] mddwbsst 10 years ago

North by Northwest is one of the greatest and most beloved movies ever made. It's also highly ironic that the scene you're picking on (the crop duster scene), is one of the most iconic 5 minutes in film history. The assassination attempt may be ludicrous, but who the hell cares? Only someone with an extremely limited understanding of great movies would nit-pick this tiny facet of a brilliant and nearly flawless film.

Couldn't agree more, I watched just this afternoon, and is really a good film, and that scene has got to be one of the best in film history. It says something when an audience is still on the edge of there seats watching it, over fifty years after it came out.

[–] Chiscully 9 years ago

You took the words right off of my keyboard. Great, memorable scene in a fine Hitchcock film. Loved it.

[–] HomerParrish 10 years ago

Perhaps in real life it would be a bad idea, but cinematically, it was a spectacular way to kill him. The crop duster scene is one of the most spectacular in the history of film.

[–] fugazzi49 10 years ago

Generallusgrant has it right. Every movie has certain elements that don't quite add up. What matters is the quality of the whole film. In a film of this magnitude you gladly overlook these little things. Sure, a car could have driven up and someone could have simply shot him, but then we wouldn't have had one of the most famous scenes in movie history. I'll take the scene Hitchcock shot anytime.

[–] ecarle 10 years ago

Well, as someone pointed out, the crop duster attack is really ahead of its time: the first drone assault.

---

the imdb "poster analysis model" (strongly based on people seeking to make sure that all plot holes are discovered and exposed) breaks down with Hitchcock because he said "I practice absurdity quite religiously."

The crop-duster scene, Hitchcock said, was meant to consciously REJECT traditional thriller attacks on a darkened street in the dead of night: move the whole thing outside, in broad daylight, with cars passing by and nowhere to hide...and have fun.

But I think there is also some "plot justification" for the attack:

Phillip Vandamm, as a murderous spy master, really seems to like "playing games and putting on a show."

Not for him, just shooting people. The drunk drive is one show, the crop duster attack another and...just for kicks...he has chosen to take a second home right there behind Mount Rushmore, as if to thumb his nose at democracy itself.

Note: there never has been, and never will be, a house behind Mount Rushmore. The government wouldn't allow it, and there's no room up there for one, anyway(I"ve looked).

But North by Northwest is a great big fantasy fairy tale...and Hitchcock WANTED to film a chase across Mount Rushmore...so there it is.

[–] rorysa 10 years ago

Hitchcock saw NNW as a filmed nightmare (except he realized it could not be as disjointed as an actual nightmare), so not everything has to make perfect sense.

[–] StevenSmithNYC 10 years ago

Simple. They want him killed, but they want it to look like an accident. With an accident that doesn't focus attention on a murder investigation. They started to shoot at him, when it became obvious to them they weren't going to be able to kill him by making it look like an accident. Remember they thought he was a government agent.

It's not a dumb idea. It's a movie, not a novel. Movies are visually. It was a great scene.

[–] TwoThousandOneMark 8 years ago

I watched the dvd commentary with the film's writer. He said they went with the airplane run to make Thornhill's death look like a complete accident.

The writer did also point out there was one logic mistake that was greenlit into the film, which he was unhappy with- the bullet fire. Them shooting at Thornhill defeated the entire idea of making it look accidental. A single bullet wound would've cratered the cover.

As to the scene proper, Hitch always wanted to film such a 360 degree shot of someone absolutely in the middle of nowhere.
While it's a technical marvel, because it's always fresh & quite visually appealing, the scene does seem overplayed upon re-watches - pulling Thornhill out of Chicago, only to have him end right back there.

ps
From Russia With Love's helicopter attack is a full nod to this scene, & even then they took away accidental death with them dropping explosives over 007.

...top 50 http://www.imdb.com/list/ls056413299/

[–] CharlesTheBold 10 years ago

When I saw the scene, I thought: why didn't Thornhill just stand behind one of the gateposts at the scene? The pilot would realize that ramming him could wreck the plane and possibly result in his own death. Actually Thornhill did use the oil truck that way later.

[–] andeven 10 years ago

Of course it's dumb. Like plying our hero with drink and assuming that he will automatically crash the car they've put him in and be killed. Like throwing a knife in a crowded building and assuming not only that nobody will see you do it but also that if it kills an innocent man Thornhill will automatically grab hold of the knife, be photographed by a convenient pressman and make a run for it rather than stop and explain - and get clean away on foot despite half the NYPD chasing him. It's the Batman syndrome where the master criminals insist on ludicrously bizarre ways of killing him and Robin so that there's always a chance - indeed a certainty - that they'll get out of it

But.....it's Hitch and these are marvellously entertaining moments from a marvellously entertaining film. Live with it.

[–] Soodinum 9 years ago

Slightly silly yes, but imagine if they'd killed him. They could have flown off and it would have been a mystery to authorities. No sign of a car being there etc.