North by northwest
USA, 1959
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Ernest Lehman
Genre: Thriller / Intrigue / Espionage
Soundtrack composer: Bernard Herrmann
Editor: George Tomasini
Production company: Alfred Hitchcock
Production company: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Main actors:
Cary Grant (Roger O. Thornhill)
Eva Marie Saint (Eve Kendall)
James Mason (Phillip Vandamm)
Martin Landau (Leonard)
Leo G. Carroll (The Professor)
Philip Ober (Lester Townsend)
Josephine Hutchinson (Thornhill’s mother)
Plot
Roger Thornhill is a New York advertising executive with a busy work schedule and a very close relationship with his mother. During one of his business meetings, he is accosted at gunpoint by a group of strangers who kidnap him and take him to a sumptuous mansion in the suburbs owned by Lester Townsend. Lester Townsend and his thugs are convinced that Roger is really a George Kaplan and try to interrogate him. Unable to extract information from him, the abductors force him to drink an entire bottle of bourbon, and in a state of complete inebriation, place him behind the wheel of a car, with the intention of driving him off a cliff to make his death look like an accident…
However, despite being drunk, Roger manages to control the vehicle and get on the road, closely followed by his kidnappers. But his reckless driving attracts the attention of the police, who arrest him for speeding. Accused of driving under the influence of alcohol, he spends the night at the police station. The next morning, in the presence of his lawyer and his mother, the authorities set out to clear up the matter. Roger insists that he is the victim of a conspiracy, that he was forced to drink against his will and claims that they tried to kill him. To prove it, he takes the judge, the police, his lawyer and his mother to Townsend’s mansion. But once there everything seems different from the day before. A woman he had never seen before, who claims to be Townsend’s wife, assures him that Roger attended a party and drank too much. Everything points to Roger making up her implausible explanations. Mrs. Townsend, on the other hand, says that her husband is at the United Nations headquarters where he is a diplomat and is about to give a speech.
Roger is forced to pay a fine and must endure the scorn of no one believing his version of events. However, he does not give up and, together with his mother, he goes to the hotel mentioned by Townsend, where Kaplan is supposedly staying.
There they find the room empty and without a trace of having been used. Roger finds a photograph showing Townsend. The hotel employees take him for Kaplan, but at the same time admit they have never seen him before. Roger receives a phone call in that room: It is his kidnapper. After finding out that the call came from the hotel lobby, Roger rushes there. Seeing Townsend’s henchmen in the elevator he flees the hotel by cab leaving his mother behind and is followed by the thugs. He makes his way to the United Nations headquarters. There he tries to locate Townsend, and one of the secretaries arranges a meeting between the two in a crowded room in the building.
When Lester Townsend arrives, Roger realizes to his surprise that he is not the same man who kidnapped him. Roger must ascertain that the organizer of his abduction has usurped Townsend’s identity. When Roger shows the diplomat the photograph showing his kidnapper, the real Townsend is stabbed in the back by one of the henchmen who had followed Roger there. Townsend collapses lifelessly next to Roger, and those present interpret that he was his killer. They even take a photograph of Roger at the scene, which soon after appears on the front page of all the newspapers.
Now Roger is forced to flee. If he tells the truth, no one will believe him. Considered a dangerous murderer and fugitive from justice, Roger heads for the train station with the intention of escaping the city.
The police are on high alert for his escape. Roger sneaks onto one of the trains, bound for Chicago, and meets an attractive young woman who mysteriously offers to help him.
The girl’s name is Eve and she seems to be very attracted to him. During the introductions he tries to hide his true identity from her, but she is already aware of who Roger really is and that he is a “dangerous fugitive”. Even so, or precisely because of this, Eve sets out to prevent Roger from falling into the hands of the police and hides him in her compartment. Roger reveals to the young woman that once in Chicago he will track down the elusive and enigmatic Kaplan for whom his enemies confuse him, and she collaborates by arranging a date between them…
Comment
Magnificent work by Alfred Hitchcock with an espionage story as a background. Unwittingly, the protagonist gets involved in a spiral of events resulting from the behind-the-scenes struggles between two opposing factions of secret agents.
“North by northwest” contains two mythical scenes in the history of cinema: Roger (Cary Grant) is chased by a crop duster plane in a barren landscape (where he waits for Kaplan), the plane tries to ram him and from it his enemies shoot at him to kill him. The other famous sequence is the chase that takes place later on Mount Rushmore, where the effigies of the first U.S. presidents are sculpted in gigantic size.
On this occasion Hichcock did not count on James Stewart as the protagonist, because he blamed him for the little commercial success he had had the previous year with “Vertigo”. The one chosen to play Roger Thornhill was another great actor of those years, Cary Grant.
Hitchcock handles like few others the creation of moments of maximum tension. The plot is solidly constructed even if in many aspects it is not very plausible. First and foremost, “North by northwest” is a highly entertaining adventure film, set in the context of the Cold War, with two factions of spies trying to get their hands on an important microfilm. Various adventures, exciting chases, growing intrigue, romance and a nice humorous touch are the ingredients of this film – whose structure and style reminds of the one Hergé used to use for his comics about the reporter Tintin (especially “The Calculus Affair” comes to mind here).
The seductive Eva Marie Saint plays the sibylline spy who, on behalf of the evil Vandamm, tries to lead the hapless advertising executive to his doom. At first Eve (who is a double agent) only pretends to fall in love with him in order to manipulate him, but gradually she will begin to feel genuine affection for Roger.
The actress who plays Roger’s mother, Jessie Royce Landis, was only 8 years older than Cary Grant.
James Mason, who gives life to Agent Vandamm (the fake Townsend at the beginning) would participate a few years later in Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed “Lolita” (1962), characterizing the mature professor Humbert Humbert, who falls in the nets of the captivating teenager.
In both “Vertigo” and “North by Northwest” the protagonist is the victim of a manipulation orchestrated by sinister and invisible elements, who use him as a puppet or chess piece in a game beyond his comprehension to achieve their designs.
The film not only has moments of great emotional charge or an extremely tense atmosphere, but also sequences impregnated with humor, such as the elevator with the mother, the auction, or in general all the misunderstandings that lead to confusion between Roger and the (fictitious) agent Kaplan.
As in “Vertigo”, the credits of “North by Northwest” were designed by Saul Bass; and the soundtrack was also composed by Bernard Herrmann.
Alfred Hitchcock makes one of his famous cameos: He appears very early in the film as a man who misses the bus.
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