Excellent analysis.
Its funny. "North by Northwest" was a light and funny Hitchcock film -- albeit always serious beneath the surface and certainly not without many deaths. Nonetheless, right after "North by Northwest," Hitchcock gave the world the then-super-gory shocker "Psycho," and his films thereafter had bloody murders, heavy violence, and a certain grim view of life.
Except for "Family Plot." Coming as it did after Hitchcock's quite brutal and sick "Frenzy"(1972), I've always felt that the lightweight "Family Plot" was made by the very aged and sick Hitchcock for one specific reason: so the brutal and sick "Frenzy" would NOT be his final film. A comeback hit "Frenzy" was, but Hitchcock could not have wanted that as his final bow.
And perhaps that is why Hitchcock sought Ernest Lehman, who had written "the last light and funny Hitchcock picture," to come back for "Family Plot." Ironically, in the years between "North by Northwest" and "Family Plot," Ernest Lehman had become a big shot, just like Hitch. No longer a "mere writer," Lehman produced movies like The Sound of Music and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. But Lehman's doom came when he produced the expensive flop "Hello, Dolly"(1969) and then directed his first film -- the very sexual "Portnoy's Complaint" from a very hot novel. A lot of critics were waiting for a very "important" version of "Portnoy's Complaint." They hammered Lehman for screwing it up...and suggested he was simply too old for the job.
Hitchcock himself nastily told an interviewer that he could get Ernest Lehman to "merely write" "Family Plot" because Lehman had no work after the twin flops of "Hello, Dolly"(which I personally like very much, but which was considered "old-fashioned") and "Portnoy's Complaint"(which starred Karen Black of Family Plot, btw.)
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I went to a seminar with Ernest Lehman in the seventies and he noted that the "runaway car" scene in Family Plot was designed to "fix" the "drunk drive car scene" in "North by Northwest." Hitchcock and Lehman did this by removing the POV shots of the car hood(from NBNW) so that in Family Plot, you don't have the hood blocking the dizzying experience of the road ahead.
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The multiple identity angle is strong in "Family Plot" as is its brotherhood with the comedy thrills of "North by Northwest."
But I have always seen "Family Plot" as a remake of Psycho: structurally.
Superimpose:
Psycho: Investigators(Arbogast, Sam, Lila) follow a person from one plot(Marion Crane, embezzler) into ANOTHER plot(young man harbors homicidal maniac mother in old house behind his motel). As the investigators push Norman hard to find Marion, they are actually putting their lives at risk if they find Mother.
Family Plot: Investigators(Lumley and Madame Blanche) following a person from one plot(Eddie Shoebridge, missing heir to the Rainbird fortune) into ANOTHER plot(Arthur Adamson is really a dangerous kidnapper of VIPS). As the investigators push Adamson hard to find Eddie Shoebridge, they are actually putting their lives at risk if they find out that Adamson is the kidnapper.
Psycho is scarier and more violent than Family Plot, but both films rely on the suspenseful irony of people pushing hard to find one person and running up against a far more dangerous person.
As Hitchcock said, "Self-plagarism is style" and his movies DO plagarize each other, but I find it a matter of "exploring the same themes in different ways."
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