North By Northwest
After the first time I watched North By Northwest, probably about this time last year, I wasn’t thrilled by it and at times I found the pacing too slow and the plot too convoluted. However, in my second viewing I learnt to let the plot slowly reveal itself and accept the fact that Hitchcock, in the case of this film, intends to hide as much from the audience as possible. He shows and tells when he wants, it took 40 minutes for the audience to know more than its bumbling, ignorant protagonist William Thornhill. Initially this slow release of information didn’t match up with my expectations as a modern day film viewer who is well acquainted with films that rarely, if ever, leave you in the lurch.
North by Northwest subverts the Spy/Thriller genre it loosely falls into in several different ways.
- Humour: The script of NBNW is filled with puns, sexual innuendos (the famous last shot) and even flat out jokes ‘war is hell, even when its a cold one’. This dry humour gives the film an extra point of focus for an ‘in the know’ viewer and emphasises the farcical nature of the film and the absurdity of the story line. The story line sends up 1950’s ‘Cold War’ fear, with an everyman being trapped and caught up in War. There is also the irony of an ad-man has falling into a world of deceit.
- Cary Grants ‘Roger Thornhill’: Instead of being reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart in say, The Maltese Falcon, Thornhill seems like a distant relation of George Clooney’s Ulysses Everitt McGill in ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’. Grant, instead of matching the audiences expectations of him as a witty, hard-bitten hero, he instead plays an inarticulate, dopey leading man, who hysterically and accidently assumes the role of a person who doesn’t even exist. On top of his ability to make things worst he also doesn’t redeem himself as heroic, he steals an innocent mans car after the plane/bus crash and doesn’t save his love Eve on top of Mount Rushmore (a random policeman snipes the villain). Thornhill is also submissive to his passive aggressive Mother.
- The Plot is slowly dispersed to the viewer throughout the film, Hitchcock is brilliant at withholding information and delivers it in dribs and drabs. In many contemporary spy/thriller films information is delivered to the audience in big hits and twists-or alternatively pieces of the plot are never withheld.
- Eve Kendall: Hitchcock sets us up to believe that Eve Kendall played by Eve Marie Saint is a Femme Fatale leading Thornhill into dangerous, potentially deadly situations. However he subverts this cleverly-later on in the film it turns out she’s a good guy, just infiltrating the bad guys.
There are many areas that North By Northwest does fit the bill as a quintessential Spy/Thriller film.
– The Consistent rise in action when the plot begins to slow: Throughout the film, in fairly set intervals, there are huge pieces of action that pick up the pace of the film and grab the audiences attention. There is a car chase at the beginning, A plane driven terrorist attack in the middle and an action based shoot out in the final 10 minutes. These conventions of Spy/Thriller films are much of the reason the genre is still so popular today.
– Shadows: There were quite a few scenes that were brightly lit in order to create shadows around the room, there were times where characters hid in shadows, or looked like shadows whilst being silhouetted. This is a motif of the spy/thriller film and for Hitchcock it was a throwback to the Film Noirs of 40’s that he superseded.
-The Score: The triumphant score not so subtly informed the audience of what to expect from each scene. If something mysterious or ‘shady’ was happening the orchestra would certainly let the viewer know about it. In my notes I wrote ‘musical foreshadowing’.
-Pacing: The film was approximately one paced for the most past-until the climax and rise in action at the very end which brought the film to a quick and suspenseful finale.
What do I want from this course?
-I’d like too work on things like scene coverage and shot selection, because I’m able to pick apart the components of scene e.g. the lighting, the writing, the acting (and if they are good or bad) but putting them into practice (especially things such as lighting and shot selection) I struggle with because I really don’t know where to begin. I guess whenever I shoot a scene and try to make a scene work my edits are always too jarring- this is sometimes down to the actors lack of rhythm and sometimes due to my poor cutting/or choice of shot.
-What do all good filmmakers have in common? This is a question I don’t really know the answer too, I think by studying different genres and looking at some films within them will help me in find the common denominator/s, I guess what I want to know is that, regardless of genre, a good film is a good film. Why is this the case? What do they share? Is this question an impossible one?