Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
Date:         Wed, 27 Jan 1993 09:33:03 EST
From:         "Michelle Pfeiffer's Purrvert (Yee, Eugene)" <YEE@DICKINSN.BITNET>
Subject:      North by Northwest

The following is an examination paper I wrote for my philosophy (philosophy
in film) class last semester.  I would have posted this personally to Ellen,
who asked me to share some of my insights on North by Northwest, but I lost
her address.  Anyway, you're welcome to read what I've written.  Since the
prof never passed back our papers, I don't know what grade I got on this exam.
Not to brag but I must have did SOMETHING right to get an A- in the class.
Criticism on my examination paper is welcome.  (Just don't be too harsh.
*grin*)

     Cary Grant figuratively embodies every meaning of the word "actor."  He
acts.  He "represents a character in a dramatic production:"  C.K. Dexter
Haven in The Philadelphia Story, and Walter Burns in His Girl Friday.  He is a
"performer."  However, according to Stanley Cavell's "The World Viewed," a
performer is not synonymous with an actor.  Cary Grant is a "screen performer
[who] is essentially not an actor at all:  he [not the actor's role] *is* the
subject of study, and a study not his own."  (p. 28).  But isn't Cavell's
definition of a screen performer the same as "one that behaves as *if* acting
a part"?  In his study of The Philadelphia Story, Cavell writes that it seems
to him "George Cukor [the director of the film] is calling upon the quality of
Grant's photogenesis discovered... I mean the air he [Grant] can convey of
mental preoccupation, of a continuous thoughtfulness that makes him
spiritually inaccessible to those around him."  ("Pursuits of Happiness, p.
145), meaning that Grant is behaving as himself, not as his character role, on
the screen.  The audience won't see Dexter Haven or Walter Burns but Cary
Grant in his films.  Thus, taking advantage of the audience's perception of
this star, his persona, Alfred Hitchcock casted Grant as Roger Thornhill in
North by Northwest.
     Grant's persona was created and carried through all the film's he's been
in, particularly The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday.  One part of his
persona is his "authoritativeness or charisma."  (ibid., p. 139).  In George
Cukor's The Philadelphia Story, Dexter (grant) is never seen relinquishing his
control over any given situation to any of the other characters.  During his
drunken stupor, working-class, _Spy_ reporter Mike Macauley Connor (James
Stewart) says to wealthy socialite Dexter, "Champagne makes you my equal."  To
which, Dexter replies, "I wouldn't say that."  His snide remake is true.  Mike
and Dexter are social class extremes of one another.  But we cannot help but
oversee Dexter's conceit because we find him and his nature appealing.
Another example, in his revelating confrontation with his ex-wife Tracy Lord
(Katherine Hepburn), Dexter says to her that she's "never a first class woman
until [she's] able to accept human frailty."  Again, that is rather a direct
and harsh observation imposed upon her, but Dexter is absolutely right about
Tracy, who eventually succumbs to the truth by the film's end.  Dexter has
this ability to draw out, usually through manipulation, the truth about
people, because he, or rather Grant, is a figure we identify with.  He is the
director's eye or camera, so to speak.  We the audience see and agree with
what he sees.  This manipulative part of Grant's persona is carried on into
Howard Hawk's His Girl Friday.  In this film, Walter Burns (Grant) cleverly
maneuvers his way back into (another) ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind
Russell).  He knows that Hildy is not being straightforward with her
explanations why she has returned, that she "wants to go someplace where [she]
can be a woman.", that being a life of an insurance salesman's (Bruce/Ralph
Bellamy) wife, and, according to Walter's facetious surprise, a life "in
Albany, [New York] too!"  Furthermore, he knows that she knows from his
pleading for her to ccover the Earl Williams' story, and from his unending
phone calls and messages, including one in skywriting, that he wants her back.
However, in essence, Hildy is playing hard-to-get with Walter.  Before they
head to the restaurant for lunch, she says, "You're wasting your time, Walter.
[It] won't do you a bit of good."  Also, in his office, Walter says, "You know
there's always been a light burning in the window for you.", flirtatiously
inviting Hildy to sit on his lap.  To which, she replies, "I jumped out of
that window a long time ago."  Although the ending is as ambivalent as the
characters themselves (It isn't certain if Walter and Hildy do reunite
together.), we are led to believe that Grant's manipulation of the truth and
charismatic qualities will win Hildy back, because they comprise the "Cary
Grant" figure.
     Besides the fact that his persona is maintained throughout in both The
Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday, Grant serves the same purpose in both
films.  That purpose is to create a new woman and to reunite with her through
deception and, again, manipulation.  In The Philadelphia Story, to bring Tracy
down from her status as "virgin goddess" to humanity, Dexter introduced Mike
and Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into her highly class-privileged and -structured
life, for he knows that they, especially Mike, can catalyze Tracy's
transformation.  They can allow her and other people to see in themselves
their true colors and their true nobility.  Again, this reinforces the point
that Dexter is very much like a director, our eye of truth.  In His Girl
Friday, the creation of a new woman is opposite that in the former film.
Here, rather than humanizing her, Grant civilizes her, Hildy, from a
"doll-face hick" to a "newspaper*man*."  Through trickery, Walter is able to
accentuate the femininity in Hildy's place in a male-dominated society.  He
sends her to the press room of the Criminal Courts Building, the place of her
gradual realization.  There is where she is the only female among the
reporters covering the case.  And there is where she recovers her feminine
feelings by leading Molly Malloy, Earl Williams' fragile girlfriend, away from
the pestering of the male reporters, and consoling her outside the press room.
 As illustrated from both films, Grant's role is typically one in which it
forces the female lead to "undergo something like deather and revival."
     However, the situation is reversed in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
Now, Roger Thornhill (Grant) is the one forced to undergo the process of death
and revival, twice, and Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) is the one with
directorial control.  First, Roger is mistakened for a George Kaplan, a name
which belongs to a non-existing CIA agent, a decoy for another agent, Eve.  He
is kidnapped and stripped of his own identity by a Mr. Van Damme (James
Mason).  Unable to convince Van Damme, the police, and the public the truth,
Roger is forced to assume the role of George Kaplan.  During the hotel
sequence in which he and his mother investigate Kaplan's room, he questions
the maid Elsie and concludes, "She even thinks I'm Kaplan.  I wonder if I look
like Kaplan."  Evidently, from the size of the suit in the closet, he is
obviously not Kaplan.  Still, he next questions the valet.  When asked if
Roger is indeed George Kaplan, the valet answers, "Of course you are.  You're
the gentleman in room 746."  Cary Grant's ability to reveal the truth in
others has also been taken away.  So ironically, later at the United Nations
General Assembly, Roger said to the receptionist, "My name?  Kaplan.  George
Kaplan."  Thus, that is the first instance in which Roger "dies" and becomes a
new man, by accepting the fictitious identity.  The second instance of his
death and revival appears near the climax of the film.  In order not to expose
Eve's cover, he, as Kaplan, had to be terminated.  This accomplished when she
refuses an shoots him with blanks at the foothills of Mount Rushmore.  As a
result, Kaplan dies and Roger is free to assume his former self and identity.
The process of death and creation of a new man was ran through once and was
reversed.
     As stated, Hitchcock awards Eve directorial control of a situation.  She
is the one, not Grant, who reveals the truth in other people, including Grant.
 Similar to her counterparts (Barbara Stanwyck's Jean and Eve) in Preston
Sturges' The Lady Eve, she too employ deceit and manipulation to force the man
to acknowledge his true nature.  After the memorable sequence in which the
crop duster makes attempts at his life, realizing he had been set up by Eve,
Roger confronts her with anger and hatred.  First, in her hotel room, he asks,
"How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?"  To which, she responds,
"Lucky, I guess."  But Roger corrects her, that she is "naughty" and "wicked",
and that she can only "please a man to death."  Like her biblical counterpart,
she "use[s] sex like a flyswatter."  At this point, Grant loses his charm and
charisma as well.  The audience can't help but dislike him and agree with Eve
and Van Damme a little that "[he's] no fake.  [He's] a genuine idiot," a truth
which Roger quickly learns from Eve's superior.  As Hopsy (Henry Fonda) had
learned about Jean in The Lady Eve, Roger learns that Eve is the most genuine
of the two.  So Eve has the power to make one come to a sudden and complete
understanding of one's self.
     But, unlike the other three "comedies of remarriage" and Cukor's Adam's
Rib, the marriage between Roger and Eve at the conclusion of North by
Northwest is a pure, honest, and legitimate one.  In contrast to the Lady Eve,
Roger and Eve's relationship is apparently void of any further deception on
both their parts in the end; whereas in Hopsy and Jean's relationship, Jean
feels there isn't a need for Hopsy to know about her revenge on him.  This
time in The Philadelphia Story, it's the man, Dexter, who continues his
reception and his manipulation right into his remarriage to Tracy.  Then, in
His Girl Friday, we do not really know if the pair, Walter and Hildy, is going
off together married or unmarried.  "The speculation is pertinent.  It is a
premiss of farce that marriage kills romance."  (Ibid., p. 186).  Neither the
marriage nor the romance in North by Northwest is a farce.  Lastly, in Adam's
Rib, according to Adam (Spencer Tracy), "for that little difference," he and
Amanda's (Katherine Hepburn) marriage or remarriage is still flawed,
suggesting an ever-present inequality between the sexes.  But, whose
difference it is, we do not know.  Therefore, since neither the man nor the
woman has anything to hide, and neither is ambivalent about their equality and
their relationship, only Roger and Eve's marriage is legitimate and workable.
For, before the camera wipes from their extended arms hanging over Mount
Rushmore to a train cabin, we hear Eve ask, "Is that a proposition?"  And
Roger says, "No, it's a proposal."
     Although, in North by Northwest, Cary Grant is the victim of his own
medicine, so to speak, he still retains the same qualities he manifiests from
film to film.  One is his deadpan humor.  His being in danger of driving off
the cliffsides, while heavily introxicated, hardly frightened us because of
his humorous, facial expressions.  At one point in that sequence, he looks
over the cliff and only says, "Oooh."  Another example is when he is arrested
at the art auction and how he carries on about himself in the police car,
"Don't you know who I am?"  I'm Roger Thornhill!  I'm a dangerous assassin,
a mad killer on the loose!"  Obviously, he wants the police to protect him
from Van Damme's men, but he isn't being taken seriously, not by us nor even
one of the policeman, who asks Roger, "No, should we?"  At which, Roger says,
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"  The fact that the policeman didn't
recognize Roger, at first, is also an example of how Grant is only seen as a
persona, and not as the character he portrays.  Secondly, his charismatic and
authoritative qualities are transposed as well into this film.  Clearly, from
his interactions with Eve, especially during the first train sequence, he can
solicit help.  Once, Eve says, "I'm an ok girl."  He agrees further, "Yeah,
and in all the right places too."  Again, we see that this is Cary Grant, not
Roger, speaking like he has always spoken in his other previous films.
     As a result of his loss of directorial power, the differences in Grant's
persona here are it has become more vulnerable and less controllable.  As
Roger Thornhill, Dexter Haven, and Walter Burns, Grant is always in direct
control over his in direct control over his individual worlds, respectively,
his business enterprise, his upper-class status, and his newspaper.  But
through a case of mistaken identity, Grant gradually slips from order into
chaos, as evident from his life being threatened by Van Damme and his men, his
running from the law, and his involvement with Eve.  It is only when he
regains his identity as Roger that he reverses from chaos to order.  His
adamant decision to rescue Eve from Van Damme supports this statement.  And
from this successful rescue, the transitional scene in which he pulls her up
from Mount Rushmore and on to the top of the cabin bed, do the differences of
vulnerability and uncontrol leave Grant's ever familiar persona.
     The majority of Hitchock's films deal primarily with the sense of duality
within human nature.  A couple of examples are Psycho, in which Norman Bates
(Anthony Perkins) mentally wrestles with the identity of his mother, and
Rebecca, in which Mrs. DeWinters struggles between her own self and the self
as the former Mrs. DeWinters that her husband and her governess demand her to
be.  North by Northwest is obviously a story of a man (Grant) who is
desperately searching for a person whom he's been mistaken for.  Perhaps,
Hitchcock chose Grant for this role to portray the "flip-side" or the
differences of the Grant persona:  his being vulnerable, uncontrollable,
manipulated, and victimized.  On the other hand, his samenesses should still
reinforce our image of Cary Grant.  To accomplish this effect, Hitchcock
teeters back and forth between these samenesses and differences.
    This Hitchcockian sense of duality also applies to his vision of marriage
and America.  Marriage is a concept of equal and opposing forces:  the man and
the woman.  Neither one should have a slight edge, whether it be through
deception, or through "that difference."  A legitimate marriage is one between
two equals, in a nation whose declaration of independence states, "We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
     Today, Cary Grant is still defined technically as an actor.  But
according to Cavell, he is actually a "figure created in a given set of films"
("The World Viewed, p. 28), which is also true.  In our synopsis of North by
Northwest, we generally tend to use the name Cary Grant, not the character he
portrays, Roger Thornhill.  For instance, when Cary Grant answers the phone in
the restaurant, he is kidnapped by a couple of men.  In actuality, it is Roger
Thornhill who answers the phone and who is then kidnapped.  It is Dexter Haven
who marries Tracy Lords.  It is Walter Burns who leaves with Hildy Johnson.
But that's all part of the multi-faced use of Cary Grant.

--Euge(ne) Yee
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