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Watching "North by Northwest" -- with Psycho in Mind

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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So I was visiting a close female relative at the hospital the other day. Confined as she was, she decided to watch some movies on her computer, she told me. And, in my honor, she chose North by Northwest. Watched it all the way through.

And...and...and? I asked. How did you like it?

Uh...she didn't. She was sorry, she said, but she didn't find it very exciting. A lot of talk. Neither the crop duster scene nor even the Mount Rushmore climax did much for her. She was most impressed by how sexual the banter was for a 1959 film, and gave the movie "some points for wit."

I offered up my meager response in matters of this nature: "Well, you can't expect to get the same excitement in 2018 from that movie that I got in 1967 when I first saw it on the CBS Friday Night Movies....or original audiences got in 1959. North by Northwest came before Bond, before Star Wars, before Raiders, before Die Hard...the action movie has obliterated it."

She said she understood. We moved on. She's out of the hospital now. (Yay.)

But our conversation sent me back to the internet to read some rave reviews of NXNW. And to my DVD to watch the entire movie again. And to watch a DVD documentary where directors like William Freidkin(The Exorcist), Curtis Hanson(LA Confidential) and Guillermo del Toro(The Shape of Water) sang its praises to the hilt.

I felt better. I'm sorry about my relative not liking NXNW...but I still do. When I watch it, its 1967 again. Not 1959. As with Psycho in 1960, I was alive but not cognizant of those two movies on initial release. I came to them in the 60's, and they set the table for everything: NXNW: the most exciting chase thriller I'd ever seen. Psycho: the most scary movie I'd ever NOT been allowed to see except in my imagination(1971 would bring a first viewing.)

I love how NXNW launches with Herrmann's purring, slowly building fandango building and building and building (over the MGM lion roaring against a weirdly matted GREEN background) and then exploding. "The most exciting first 30 seconds of any movie," I have now thought for DECADES. The Saul Bass/Bernard Herrmann credits (one of only three such in Hitchocck -- Vertigo and Psycho get the others) are exhilarating enough to get one pumped up for an adventure that will take some time to get going, but really gets going.

On this watch, I realized how, by showing us Grant's Roger Thornhill at work with his secretary and the men in the Oak Bar, we are being set up for suspense: we CLEARLY know that this man CANNOT be a CIA agent...so we share his ever tightening dread and suspense when Vandamm and Company not only refuse to believe his story, but take action to kill him post haste. Its very scary really -- almost as "Psycho" scary as a madwoman who comes at you with a knife and no explanation why.

That initial Glen Cove mansion sequence is top notch Hitchcock in its mix of dialogue and cinematics: the low angles up at Mason, the high angles down on Grant. The initial "dance" as Mason and Grant circle each other. How Mason slowly lights some lamps in the room, confirming this scene takes place at dusk-into-night(as the Arbogast-Norman interrogation will play one year later) and queasily reminding us of how seductively Grace Kelly used a similar lamp-lighting to greet James Stewart in Rear Window(in this new "two men" context, there IS a homoerotic vibe, if only briefly.)

More greatness at Glen Cove: just listening to Grant and Mason trade lines with their great, inimitable voices. British in origin , but MORE ...something smooth and plummy in Grant's voice, something ominous and seething in Mason's. Great lines -- "Games? Must we?" "With your expert playacting, you make this very room a theater." A great camera move WITH Grant to the door -- blocked by Valerian; desperately "Townsend, you're making a serious mistake."

And talking about mistakes: Thornhill thinks Vandamm is Townsend. Vandamm thinks Thornhill is Kaplan!

Mason intoning the phrase "Rapid City, South Dakota" and setting up the film's climax with those words. And THESE words of imminent death:

Mason: A pleasant journey, sir. (To heaven!)
Landau:(Proffering a bottle full of bourbon to Grant) It would be better if you drank this yourself...otherwise, we must ...INSIST.

...and then the great nighttime shot of Grant being dragged into the Mercedes for the deadly drunk drive...with crashing waves and seacliffs in the distance...and "thriller netherworld."

And that's just the first 20 minutes of this gem. I'm afraid I was so enthralled watching just this "opening set-up sequence" to North by Northwest, that my female relative's dismissal of the film simply didn't matter anymore.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And I stuck it out. The film is marvelously organized and structured. Three action set-pieces: drunk drive(first act); crop duster(second act); Mount Rushmore(climax at third act). One brilliant and hilarious murder scene(at the UN); one screwball escape scene(at the auction.) And the daring move to withhold the film's heroine(Eve Kendall) until the second act...yet to somehow establish her quite quickly as The Love of Roger Thornhill's Twice Married Life. (Plus indeed all that hubba-hubba-hubba sexual banter on the train...as one of the directors on the DVD documentary say: "I can't imagine how that hit audiences in 1959.)

I was reminded that NXNW was from an era where you didn't NEED to have an action "beat" every seven minutes or so. After the "warm up" of the drunken drive, NXNW had enough plot, incident, and romance to keep you waiting expectantly over half an hour more, for the reward of the great crop-duster sequence, and then after that, there was enough fun, drama and plot revelation to keep the film building towards the Big One: the climax on Mount Rushmore(which rather ruined all the spy movies and suspense comedies Hitchcock later made: how could you TOP Mount Rushmore for a cliffhanger climax? Hitchcock sure couldn't.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

North by Northwest and Psycho stand as my two favorite films of all time. They WERE the most exciting and scariest films in my most formative years -- all the more exciting and scarier movies since then because: they can't take that away from me. And they now have an "extra level of sophistication" (in character, in dialogue, in non-action scenes) that the movies simply aren't allowed to give us anymore. They have become unique.

But this:(perhaps the overriding rationale for this particular post) The more I got wrapped up in the size and splendor of the VistaVision/Technicolor North by Northwest, the more my attempts to visualize Psycho as "the next Hitchcock" were thwarted. I kept trying to picture Psycho against the backdrop of the "bigness" of North by Northwest and...Psycho...SHRUNK. It just seemed very small in my mind. Black and white. Low budget. A couple of murder scenes. A climax not on the giant statues of Mount Rushmore , but in a cramped little fruit cellar.

How amazing it was that Hitchcock himself was so willing to "throttle down" for his next movie after North by Northwest. How more amazing still that THAT movie(Psycho) would be a much bigger hit THAN North by Northwest. You never know.

I'm sure that all it would take to undo the domination of big North by Northwest" in my mind over "little Psycho" in my mind would be...just to watch Psycho again, immediately. But I've watched Psycho enough in recent years. Can't overkill it. Indeed, in watching North by Northwest at length here, I realized that on balance, I watch Psycho a lot more often THAN North by Northwest, even if I like them equally(NXNW is about a half hour longer than Psycho, for one thing.)

Anyway, other movies to watch on my TV; other movies to see "at the movies," but my "control group" of favorite Hitchcocks will remain for all time, I think.

Just not always Psycho....