North By Northwest. 1959. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

(7/27/00)

I am not going to say much about this wonderful film which is one of my favorites. I am just going to set down a few thoughts that came to me this time around.

Eva Marie Saint is obviously playing a Grace Kelly part. I wonder if Kelly (in her prime) would have been better. She certainly had more of the stature of an icon to match against Cary Grant, but I wonder. Would that stature have made so much of a difference? Eva Marie Saint pulls it off with such perfect poise that Grace Kelly just somehow doesn't seem adequate.

The scene between Grant and Saint in the dining car is just done so well that it is always enjoyable, no matter how many times you see it. Saint's up-front, no-nonsense sexual invitation goes so against the manners of the time that it takes someone with the assurance of a Cary Grant to take it in stride.

I loved the scene in the bathroom at the train station when Cary Grant has to shave with Eva Marie Saint's tiny razor with another fellow looking on. I hadn't remembered that. It's just another example of the wit and imagination that flows so freely in this film.

I really enjoyed Grant's cruelty towards Saint at the auction scene. She is a woman who has been exploited and used and did what she did in order to protect herself, but yet Grant's cruel, bitter response strikes a deep chord. Perhaps it is out of a sense of feeling vulnerable to women myself. And the fact is that, whatever the reason, she really did use sex in an attempt to lure a man to his death.

North By Northwest has a closer kinship to Notorious than I had realized. In both films a woman is used by the American government to take advatage of a man who is really in love with her. The woman consents to this arrangement so she is at the same time both victim and villaness. (Vandamm's feelings towards his mistress are made clear when he refuses Grant's offer of his silence in exchange for the opportunity to send Eve Kendall to prison.)

In both Notorious and North By Northwest the villain comes across as likable. Eve says of Vandamm that she fell in love with him and saw only his charm. An argument can be made that in this film the villain really isn't even a villain at all. He imports and exports. What? "Government secrets, perhaps," says the Professor. The government is shown to be an ugly institution that plays games with people's lives and degrades the people that get enmeshed in those games. So is there anything really wrong in trying to make a profit importing and exporting its secrets? I have no doubt that the Professor and his cronies would gladly do business with Vandamm if he had anything to sell that they wanted.

The Professor refuses to lift a finger to help Roger Thornhill until it suits his interest. And then he goes to him for help and gets it by lying to him. To Thornhill's credit he then takes matters into his own hands and goes out on his own to save the damsel in distress. However, there is one bizarre twist in that it takes those government agents to save Thornhill and Kendall on the faces at Mount Rushmore.

I can't help wondering what lies they told Eve Kendall to get her to help them. These people will stop at nothing. And Cary Grant's speech about how you ought to start losing a few cold wars is simple, direct and to the point. It is an amazingly subversive thing to hear in a big-budget movie of 1959.

I marvelled at the sheer imagination that came up with something like the murder at the U.N. building. That was such a brilliant idea. I really enjoyed the scenes, early in the film, when Cary Grant is trying to get people to believe him. I liked the exterior shots from the train ride; I hadn't noticed them before and they are indeed beautiful.

The finale on the faces at Mount Rushmore didn't do much for me this time, but that is only because it made such an impression in the past.