Hitchcock's "blue" movie

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 1999)

Picasso had his "blue" period, and blue figured prominently in some of Elvis Presley's recordings ("Blue Moon," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "A Mess of Blues," "Moody Blue," and so on). But I don't recall hearing much about Alfred Hitchcock's blue period. Yet, the great director's "North by Northwest" is awash in that color, so much so that it must have been a deliberate, and, therefore, significant move.
Blue, and a rather unattractive pale shade of it at that, is everywhere in "North by Northwest," so damn prominent that I found myself annoyed when watching what was once one of my favorite films on video. Yes, there was so much blue that "North by Northwest" may not be one of my favorite films for long. Blue, especially that pale shade, is not my favorite color. But there's Cary Grant in a pale blue suit; the interior of the train he boards when fleeing the police is blue; the sky, of course, is blue; and, well, there just seems to be blue--that sickening pale blue--everywhere. What was Hitchcock thinking? The master of suspense was famous for planning his films down to the smallest detail, so unless I saw a bad video transfer, he must have had a reason for emphasizing that color.
Well, "North by Northwest" is still one of Hitchcock's greatest films, although what stands out after repeated viewings is not that crop duster scene, or the escape from enemy agents across the faces of Mount Rushmore, or the naughty image at the conclusion, but the music: Bernard Herrmann's score is one of the composer's most thrilling and unforgettable works.
I must say that after my most recent encounter with the blue hues of "North by Northwest," I appreciate all the more the fact that Hitchcock made his next film ("Psycho," of course) in black-and-white.