Holey Plot lines

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2012)

A good friend saw North by Northwest again last week in a screening sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, with Eva Marie Saint present, at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia. The film was brilliant, of course, but, this time, he noticed some plotting errors that really bothered him : "The story revolves around the shady Van Damme (James Mason) trying to silence or kill Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), whom he mistakenly believes is a government agent on his tail, named George Kaplan. Kaplan is actually a fictitious figure devised by the FBI agent called the Professor (Leo G. Carroll). My problems are as follows. First, in the UN scene, when Thornhill meets Townsend, we learn that Van Damme and his cronies had taken over the empty country home of Mr. Townsend, in order to interrogate Thornhill. But the following day, when Thornhill returns to the house with the cops, the cronies are still there. It would have made more sense for them the leave an empty house for the cops, who would then disbelieve Thornhill's story completely. Instead, the crooks are right there to be seen by the cops! And not only do they identify Thornhill as being there the night before, they actually tell the cops where they can find the real Townsend! Luckily for them, the cops abandoned their investigation, but, if they hadn't, and had gone to the UN to question Mr. Townsend, they would have found out that Van Damme and the others were impostors, and they, no doubt, would have started a major investigation into Van Damme. And though the scene with the cops and the phony Mrs. Townsend was a good one, it was really unnecessary. Thornhill could have located Townsend on his own through simple research. Second, Van Damme believes that Thornhill is Kaplan throughout the movie. Yet he sends Thornhill to what he hopes will be his death in an Indiana wheat field under the pretext of an arranged meeting between Thornhill and Kaplan. But if Thornhill is Kaplan, then why would he get on a bus from Chicago to an unknown place in Indiana to meet himself? A few scenes later, when Thornhill meets Van Damme again in the auction house, I was startled to hear Van Damme call Thorndike "Mr. Kaplan." How could he still believe Thornhill is Kaplan, when he just proved he wasn't, by taking the trip to the cornfield? Van Damme should have given up on the Kaplan identification by that point in the film; it would not have hurt the narrative one bit. Third, in the auction scene, Van Damme buys a figurine which, we later learn, has microfilm inside, with government secrets. The Professor is also present at the auction, so he must have had some idea of what Van Damme was up to. Yet the Professor never arrests Van Damme with the incriminating evidence, at the auction, or anytime later! What did this man need to make an arrest? Did Hitchcock want us to believe that the FBI was totally incompetent? In the America of 1959? With all three of these problems I've outlined, it is hard for me to to believe that no one involved in the film would have noticed them at the time. All could have been remedied easily with some minor rewrites. As it stands, they compromise what is still a great classic film."