Epic Noir Thriller, Famous For Action Scenes and Smart Dialogue

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2005)

"North By Northwest", Alfred Hitchcock's mature masterwork of camera-work, is even better liked by the director's admirers than it is admired by film critics. It is long, expansive, filled with scenic and interesting changes of locales, and it is I suggest always an exciting cinema noir color adventure. The story was Hitchcock's, written as a film at his request by Ernest Lehman, and then extensively rewritten before production; at every point, I can attest, Hitchcock was increasing the realism of the treatment. The story, apart from its 'epic' feel and large number of characters, is another case of the"Rear Window", "Man Who Knew Too Much" genre that Hitchcock mined so extensively but did not discover. The "ordinary" man drawn into a web of adventure, intrigue and danger in this case is Roger O.Thornhill, Madison Avenue advertising executive. Mistaken for a government spy, he is kidnapped and taken to meet a mysterious master criminal. What follows is a succession of scenes logically developing from this premise, and one more--the fact that the spy for whom he was mistaken never existed...The scenes for which this film is famous for comprise more than almost any other suspense film can boast--the Long Island estate series, the United Nations series, the Chicago train station series, the 20th Century Limited series, the Four Corners highway series, the hotel series, the auction gallery series, the Rapid City series and the safe house series. The acting is also above average, especially Eva Marie Sant as Eve Kendall and James Mason as Philip Van Damm. Others in the cast include Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll, Jessie Royce Landis and Josephine Hutchinson. But the understated achievement of this masterpiece of music (Bernard Herrmann), art direction, lighting, sound, costumes and settings is the dialogue. Hitchcock often used dialogue whose purpose was aimed at something other than the main purpose of the ongoing scene. The great scene where Van Damm tries to get Thornhill to confess what he doesn't know, the dinner scene between Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant as Thornhill on a train escaping west, the hotel and auction house scenes and those involving the Leo G. Carroll as the devious Professor make possible much of the film's unusual power. Then there is the sheer physicality of the production's legendary action sequences--the car pursuit of an inebriated Grant, the crop-duster plane strafing sequence, and the final two scenes of Grant invading the enemy's house and then Grant and Saint escaping down the Mt. Rushmore monument have never been bettered. As Thornhill, Grant is more-than-adequate, since the director turned the story toward touches of comedy to relieve the tension he was building, though not ideal. The dozens of others in the large cast seldom have more than a few lines, save for Les Tremayne, Olin Soule, Patrick McVey and Ken Lynch in the auction scene and its aftermath. There are small errors in pacing several during the two sequences in the house used by Van Damm and elsewhere; and the line of development followed, though highly imaginative, was not always the strongest possible. But the artistry of this film is so well-realized that every scene, even the slightly imperfect, come near to being perfectly achieved, reinforcing their memorability. The love story involved incidentally is among the most interesting this side of "Rear Window". It is to be regretted that Hitchcock never again attempted a film as important, long or impressively mounted as this one, although "Topaze" comes the closest. I confess to watching even half this film every time that I can; from the opening allegory of city life--in the form of levels of human traffic involvement--to the final allegory of sex in a train entering a tunnel, I find this film to be masterfully presented and vastly entertaining on many levels.