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I Watched the 65th Anniversary Showing of North by Northwest on the Big Screen This Week

posted 6 months ago by roger1 (3626)
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I had been thinking that "golden oldies" in the Hitchocck collection only come around to the cineplex on the "0" years. I saw Psycho on its 60th Anniversary in the COVID year of 2020(in a theater, disease be damned) and this summer, the cineplexes in America will get "the 70th Anniversary of Rear Window."

But I forgot that "...5th anniversaries" matter too. So North by Northwest -- a 1959 film -- got its 65th Anniversary this last week (May 2024.) And I went.

Note in passing: actually, these cineplexes are pretty loose on their anniversaries. To show movies of greater appeal to young people, they send them out on their 15th anniversaries, their 25th anniversaries, their 35th anniversaries!

But I think that North by Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window...likely only to go out in "0" years and "5" years. So hey -- Psycho in a year (2025) will be its 65th Anniversary for cineplex showings.

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Ofttimes at the cinelexes, movies like NXNW and Psycho end up in "the little theaters in the back" and not in the biggest theaters in the building. Not this time. NXNW was in a VERY big theater on a VERY big screen, in a VERY sparkling print.

But a rather dark print. Crucially, when the two henchmen put drunk Cary Grant into a Mercedes for a "drunken death drive" over an oceanfront cliff, screen right there is usually a matte shot of waves crashing onto rocks(filmed near Big Sur, California even as the scene is set in Glen Cove, New York.) THIS time, you could barely see those waves and rocks through the darkness. And this darkness rather plagued the print , almost but only ALMOST darkening too much the night sky climax on Mount Rushmore.

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Interesting to me. I saw NXNW at "the best cineplex in town." About 2 weeks ago, I saw The Fall Guy there, first run. Now -- less than 3 weeks later - The Fall Guy is available on streaming TV to buy or rent! Less than three weeks!

Compare: North by Northwest opened in July of 1959. Its very first American network CBS TV showing was in September of...1967...that's EIGHT YEARS from screen to TV. For The Fall Guy? Less than three weeks. And that right there is how the movie experience has changed over the years.

That said, North by Northwest DID get a theatrical release in 1966 before going to CBS in 1967. That's also how they USED to do it...VHS tapes and DVDs and streaming were far in the future.

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Big theater, big print, great (if somewhat dark) print. Two of us went to see NXNW on a Wednesday night(these Fathom programs usually play on Sundays and Wednesdays only ) and...we were ALMOST the only people in the theater.

But only almost. One fellow finally straggled in during the opening credits.

Thus a record continues to hold in my movie going experience: I haven't been the ONLY person in a movie theater(with one companion) since 1972, when I went to see Robert Redford and George Segal in The Hot Rock (screenplay by William "Butch Cassidy" Goldman) and we were the only people in the theater.

Year after year, movie after movie, I wait to match that Hot Rock experience and...not this time, either.

Still, with only one other person there, this felt like a "private showing" of North by Northwest.

And we shall see if The Fall Guy plays 65 years from now at a cineplex as a classic, that would be in 2089..

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I've gone to many screenings of North by Northwest over the years. It holds at Number Two of my favorite movies of all time. Psycho is Number One. I held the two movies in a tie for a number of years -- perhaps not to look TOO sick to people who asked me, because once upon a time, Psycho was a very sick movie to like, indeed.

But over time, I have found that Psycho in its tight little One hour, forty nine minutes is simply more impactful and haunting a film than the longer , more sprawling NXNW. (NXNW is two hours and sixteen minutes...Psycho is over, time-wise, around the time Grant arrives at Mount Rushmore with Leo G. Carroll in NXNW..there's a lot more movie to come.

Psycho is more "landmark and historic" with its shocks,its blood, its shattered taboos, but as I've said here before, I think NXNW is historic and landmark in ANOTHER way: really beefing up the thriller movie into the action movie.

I recently bought an "oral history of the James Bond series" and an early chapter has men who have written TWO books on NXNW - -that I've never seen , let alone read, and each of them says that James Bond was borne of North by Northwest.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

I agree, but I would say that "James Bond" as a movie character and series is an amalgam of THREE Hitchcock movies -- NXNW (for the general structure and characterizations -- suave hero, sexy heroine, evil spymaster plus henchmen), To Catch a Thief(for Bond's casino/baccarat scenes) and Notorious(the only one of Cary Grant's four Hitchcock pictures in which he actually PLAYS a "secret agent" or spy.) Notorious has no action, but it has a sexy romance and Grant's cruel, tough manner here is an approximation of what Connery would bring to Bond.

The crop duster scene in NXNW becomes the helicopter chase of Bond in From Russia With Love, and even though From Russia With Love competes with Goldfinger as the Best Bond Ever..there can be no doubt that the helicopter scene in From Russia With Love is a sloppy, cheapjack affair with tinny melodrama music and its a reminder that in their time...the Bond movies may have made more money than most Hitchcocks, but they were much more pulpy a "B-ish, at least in the beginning.

I like to say that North by Northwest begat Bond who begat Indy who begat John McClane, who begat Neo. I'll stand by that, though it was a long journey and from Indy on, the action level in those movies far outdistanced NXNW. NXNW has THREE action sequences -- one at the beginning(drunken drive), one in the middle(crop duster) and one big one at the climax(Mount Rushmore.) As opposed to modern action films -- where "action beats" arrive every seven minutes or so, NXNW used its old-fashioned structure to MAKE US WAIT for each progressively bigger (and unique) action sequence.)

Hitchcock would do the same thing one year later with Psycho. Rather than killing someone off all bloody every ten minutes(see Friday the 13th), he MADE US WAIT for the murders, and kept us in suspense about POSSIBLE murders every step of the suspenseful way.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

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[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

In a near-empty theater, I chose the same strategy that I did a few years ago to watch Psycho in a theater. I moved us to the first row so we HAD to look way up at the movie screen , which loomed as a huge world right above our heads. I've watched NXNW on TV, on my computer, on my CELL PHONE(clilps) but...to see it restored to a gigantic VistaVision image(which alas, is no match for IMAX or even Panavision) was...a restoration of what "the movies" USED to be about: BIG.

Cary Grant in his trademark gray suit with matching gray tie(named "The Greatest Suit in Motion Picture History" by one critic) certainly loomed above us like a true movie star on that big screen. In profile he seemed a lot thinner than I remembered. I always saw James Stewart as stringbean thin and Grant as well muscled( in swimming trunks and shirtless in To Catch a Thief) But Grant's pretty damn skinny here. He even takes off his shirt again(wearing a towel at the waist) for a late scene in a Rapid City South Dakota hospital room, but seems a more slender speciment than in To Catch a Thief. Well, it WAS four years later, and he WAS 55 (and, wrote a critic of THAT scene "still well put together")

About that scene in the Rapid City Hotel Room. I was struck -- for the first time in many viewings -- by how rather broad and transparent the plotting is here.

CIA chief Leo G. Carroll("The Professor") sits amiably with Grant in the hospital room, but the point is that Grant is basically a hostage. Carroll SAYS that Grant must stay in this room because Eva Marie Saint had "shot him dead"(with blanks) and he can't be seen alive. But Carroll's hospital room cell is ALSO meant to keep Grant from trying to stop Saint from flying to Russia(likely) with the villain Vandamm(her lover.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

Grant feigns agreement with the plan: "I"ve already forgetten about HER," he says nonchalantly. (But we know he hasn't.) "I'm a cooperator," he reassures the Professor (but he gives the Professor a funny look that is TOO transparent a clue to US that...of course he's not REALLY going to cooperate, and of course he IS going to escape and go to rescue Saint at the wonderfully contrived Bad Guy's House on Mount Rushmore.)

In that brief moment of "overplayed transparency" I flashed with some weakness on a comment I have recently read from Quentin Tarantino that "North by Northwest is actually a mediocre movie." Ouch...followed by anger. But here, perhaps the standard Hollywood writing(too broad, too "telegraphing" of Grant's imminent heroism) felt...just a little bit mediocre.

But just a LITTLE bit. And the rest of the movie is such a glory that I'll reaffirm: QT may be a great entertainer-writer-director of our time, but on other people's movies, he is just another opinion. A wrong one.

And even that rather transparent scene in the hospital room has a sophisticate thought behind it: Leo G's willingness to accept Grant as "over the woman" and a "cooperator" reveals HIS lack of sophistication...he buys Grant's story as is.

For you see, I've always thought that one point NXNW makes is that The Professor and his team of "best and brightest" CIA men (and women) are...kinda dumb. They keep sending agents to "get Vandamm" and Vandamm keeps finding them out and killing them. And now they are AGAIN sending Eve Kendall to certain death because well...they've got no other options and maybe Vandamm WON'T kill her THIS TIME and...Roger Thornhill is so much smarter than the Professor and his professionals. He shows them all up. He BECOMES a GREAT spy...and even finds out that the microfilm is in that statue from the auction. And he rescues Eve...but not really...they would have died if the Professor's men hadn't of killed Leonard first.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

Side-bits:

Martin Landau ..in his film debut, is called "Leonard" throughout the movie. No other name. Like Valerian in the same movie(whom I like to call "Valerian the Knifeman.") Like Arbogast one movie later. I would sometimes debate folks around here on whether Leonard was the first or last name of the character.

Turns out: last name. Says the housekeeper when she has her gun pointed at Grant: "My husband and Mr. Leonard will be back shortly."

And about that housekeeper/cook whatever she is. A pretty large and unattractive woman. And she's Valerian's WIFE. And he treats her badly, barking commands at her like "Go tell him we're here!" Valerian's not that bad looking a guy. His wife looks less attractive and older. No wonder he's such a bad tempered assassin. And he takes it out on HER verbally. Its a sharply observed little side bit that seems much in the Hitchocck tradition: Mr. and Mrs. Valerian are bad guys and NOT a happy couple at all.

Another sidebit: At the Chicago airport about to board their plane, and hustling to do so, Leo G says to Grant: "I'm too old for this line of work." I swear I expected fusty ol' Leo G. to say "I'm too old for this shit!" But 1959 stopped that.

North by Northwest may have SOME of the Bond template, but not all of it. Eva Marie Saint never dons either a bikini nor a sexy negligee. Grant never has a knock down drag out karate fist fight with a bad guy. (Though he struggles with the henchmen early in the film and defeats Valerian the Knifeman by throwing him off Mount Rushmore in a display of superior strength. I'll bet Roger works out.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

About Valerian's fall. Whereas Norman Lloyd fell off of the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur in a classic bit where he looked up at us and fell down away FROM us (replicated in 1988 by Hans Gruber's fall in Die Hard) Valerian takes a more "head over heels" dive away from us reflective of Roger having pushed him off the rocks. It must have been harder to film Valerian taking that hurtling spin downwards than Norman Lloyd's straightahead fall backwards(recall the trick: the camera moves UP AND AWAY into a ceiling away from the "falling man" -- who doesn't fall at all.)

Some folks have tried to postulate that Norman Lloyd's fall from Lady Liberty in Saboteur and Martin Balsam's fall down the stairs in Psycho used the same trick. Wrong. Lloyd had a camera snapped up up and away from him to create the illusion of him falling down, down and away. Balsam sat in a chair in front of a process screen of a camera moving fast downstairs.

And this: in 1988's big action movie Die Hard, Hans Gruber(Alan Rickman) re-did Norman Lloyd's Hitchcock fall from Saboteur. In 1989's big action movie Batman, Cary Grant holding Eva Marie Saint by one hand while Martin Landau stepped on his other hand became Batman(Michael Keaton) holding Kim Basinger by one hand while the Joker(Jack Nicholson) stepped on his other hand. And THAT scene was filmed on a church bell tower like the one out of Vertigo - only a LOT bigger. Hitchcock was the gift that kept on giving.

Eventually, the James Bond films far outdistanced North by Northwest: more action, more sexy and scantily clad Bond Girls, more fights, more explosions and gunplay, etc.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 6 months ago

But there remains something seminal and profound about North by Northwest. Roger Thornhill is going on a "once in a lifetime adventure" that will hand him ONE special woman for the rest of his life as wife and lover. He is tested and comes out alive. And NO movie will ever get to climax on Mount Rushmore again. Its a once in a lifetime arena for the ending of a movie -- one of many reasons that North by Northwest still stands as a classic.

Note in passing: seeing North by Northwest in the front row looking up at the big screen:

Grant looked so giant in his close-ups that I'm reminded that Richard Dreyfuss gave this reason why he kept picking up chicks on Martha's Vineyard while making Jaws: "My face is 50 feet tall...in the movies."

The opening shot of the crop duster scene -- a large open space of gold-tan dirt and minimal planting -- as the small bus SLOWLY ground to a stop way down below...was enthralling. With that usual Hitchocckian "air pocket of silence" enveloping the whole thing.

Rushmore not only LOOKED great at the climax --it SOUNDED great. Whereas Hitchcock's Statue of Liberty climax happened in a "giant air pocket of silence" -- no music, Rushmore NEEDED and GOT the best Bernard Herrmann could offer. Eventually,the opening overture music comes in (over a shot of Valerian creeping under Washington's jowl) but Herrmann uses other thundering musical motifs to reach that point. The music gives the frozen, emotionless heads a certain energy...the Presidents are watching over the life and death battle beneath their very noses.

So much for the 65th Anniversary showing of North by Northwest. I look forward to the 70th Anniversary in 2029. And to Psycho's 65th next year.