I watched “North By Northwest”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/ again last night and was struck more than I had been before by the boldly modernist style the film projects. The texture of the film is wonderful: the future we were promised and never had. The opening title-sequence in which the titles are aligned with the straight lines of an international-style skyscraper with New York taxis reflected in the windows is really striking (the Seagram building?). And Roger O. Thornhill and Eve Kendall (Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint) throughout project a thoroughly enviable lifestyle that is sharply at variance with other images of the 1950s. In fact the whole film (1959) has a taste of the optimistic side of the 1960s about it: the NASA–Expo 67–white-heat-of-technology–007 side. That optimistic image of the future is something I grew up with: children’s comics like Look-and-Learn painted a picture of future cities in which we’d all be whizzing about in our personal aeroplanes (those who weren’t travelling by monorail of course). That isn’t exactly what is happening in North by Northwest, but rather a projection of of what the future might be like if the world of North by Northwest were the present (a TV in every hotel room in 1959!). Architecture and design do the work: from that opening sequence, through the United Nations (clean, sharp lines) through the exquisite train ride from New York to Chicago, through the scene in the cafe at Mt Rushmore (such a clean Scandinavian feel) to the Frank Lloyd Wright-style house at the end. Fantastic.
{ 7 comments }
Dedman 01.21.04 at 11:38 am
I don’t recall exactly, but if memory serves, Saint’s role was originally to go to Grace Kelly, but her new found life in Monaco prevented her from becoming part of that film. It’s also interesting to see Martin Landau so young – I’m so used to thinking of him as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.
Conrad Barwa 01.21.04 at 12:10 pm
The texture of the film is wonderful: the future we were promised and never had.
I suppose this can be worked in to part of the atmosphere of the film and Hitchcock’s style as well; as beneath the optimism there always lurks something much more sinister and unpleasant. There are all sorts of holes and gaps in the film; where things that should be there aren’t and things that are play a very different role than the one they are supposed to. The imaginary man whose identity Thornill is foisted with is an example of the former (as is the O. in Thornhill’s name which we are never told what it stands for) while the crop-duster plane is an example of the latter. Like the country house Grant is interrogated in early on in the film; beneath a calm and initially surface there is always something crueller and darker sustaining the image.
Maynard Handley 01.21.04 at 4:26 pm
Remember when you blog that the world is bigger than the US and Europe.
The most striking thing to me about my trip to Asia last year was the palpable sense of optimism everywhere, the feeling that the future was theirs and promised everything.
Andrew Boucher 01.21.04 at 6:40 pm
Of course one can’t judge a film just by its sets. The theme of North by Northwest is pretty negative. Set in the Cold War, the American spy agency lets innocent Grant (unknowingly) serve as bait and risk his life, so that some enemy agents can be caught. So I don’t think you can say that it “has a taste of the optimistic side of the 1960s about it,” without mentioning the flip side that it also has a test of the pessimistic side as well.
Keith 01.23.04 at 2:21 am
That optimism covering a sinister truth is a trademark of Hitchcocks, along with the modernist scenery to the film. I’m a big fan of Hitchcock. The wife and I just picked up the DVD rstoration of Rear Window. Where are the students of hitchcock though? Why haven’t we seen these themes get more coverage of late? It’s not like they wouldn’t strike a nerve with the audience…
scott h. 01.24.04 at 9:23 pm
IIRC, in the movie Grant’s character does mention what the O. stands for. Nothing. He did it as a sort of joke so that his initials would be ROT.
Vera Miles was originally Hitch’s choice to replace Grace Kelly. They had a falling out, though, because Miles got pregnant. (Something like that.) Hitch said he would have cast Kelly in every film if she hadn’t quit acting, apparently he never found a true replacement.
Conrad Barwa 01.25.04 at 12:33 am
IIRC, in the movie Grant’s character does mention what the O. stands for. Nothing. He did it as a sort of joke so that his initials would be ROT.
I didn’t know that was meant to be taken literally, will need to go back and see the movie again.
Vera Miles was originally Hitch’s choice to replace Grace Kelly. They had a falling out, though, because Miles got pregnant. (Something like that.) Hitch said he would have cast Kelly in every film if she hadn’t quit acting, apparently he never found a true replacement.
Htich had this kind of relationship with most of his leading actresses, Janet Leigh is an example that comes to mind. Given how he viewed women, it is unsurprising.
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