Notable cast/crew: Cary Grant as Roger O Thornhill. This was his fourth and final film with Hitchcock. Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall. James Mason as Phillip Vandamm. Jessie Royce Landis as Clara Thornhill. She was previously in To Catch a Thief. Leo G Carroll as The Professor. This was his sixth and final film with Hitchcock. Martin Landau as Leonard. Edward Platt as Victor Larrabee. Robert Ellenstein as Licht. Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.
Running time: 136 minutesDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
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| Faster than a speeding...wait, wrong film |
No on believes his story. When they return to the house where he was held, the police are told Thornhill was there for dinner and got too drunk to handle. The room has been cleaned up, and the woman of the house acts as if she knows him. This seals his fine for driving intoxicated.
He returns to the hotel where he was kidnapped, and he tries to contact George Kaplan. Kaplan is out, but when he goes up to the room, the chambermaid mistakes him for Kaplan. However, she's never seen Kaplan; she justs assumes he is him because he was at the room. As he encounters more hotel staff, they all think he's Kaplan, although none of them have ever actually seen Kaplan.
The spies who kidnapped him return, and he escapes and heads for the UN where he has learned the head spy is. He has him paged only to find that who he thinks is Lester Townsend is not. The real Townsend works at the UN and meets him. He has been living in his apartment and is shocked to hear there are people living in his house. Before Thornhill can show him a picture of the head spy, one of the spies trailing him throws a knife into Townsend's back, killing him. As he falls into Thornhill's arms, Thornhill grabs the knife. People seeing it think Thornhill has murdered Townsend. Thornhill flees the UN fearing a reprise of the last time the police arrested him.
The CIA is reviewing the case, but they're baffled as to how Thornhill got mistaken for Kaplan. Kaplan doesn't exist. He's a decoy created by the CIA to misdirect the spies from their real agent who has infiltrated the spy ring which is run by Phillip Vandamm, the man Thornhill thought was Townsend. The CIA leaves Thornhill to his own devices for fear that any indication that Kaplan doesn't really exist will expose their agent.
Thornhill hops on a train to Chicago where he had learned Kaplan had reservations and is aided by Eve Kendall in avoiding the police as the train departs. He has dinner with her onboard the train, and she reveals she knows who he is. She cozies up to him because she's working for Vandamm, who is also onboard in another car with his henchman. She claims to have set up a meeting with Kaplan and sends Thornhill out into a corn field to meet him. A man arrives, but it's not Kaplan. They chat for a moment until the man notices there's a crop duster dusting a field that has no crops. The man leaves on the bus, and when Thornhill is alone again, the plane moves in trying to dive bomb and shoot him. After several failed attempts, Thornhill runs back out to the highway where he stops an oil tanker. The plane crashes into the tanker causing an explosion.
Thornhill escapes and makes it to Kaplan's hotel only to find Kaplan had checked out that morning before Eve ever could have contacted him. His next address is a hotel in South Dakota. He sees Eve in the lobby and follows her up to her room. Neither lets on they know she didn't talk to Kaplan. She sneaks out to an auction while he showers, but he follows her again to find her there with Vandamm. Thornhill realizes Vandamm doesn't want him getting to the police when he puts his men in place to remove Thornhill from the auction so Thornhill causes a disturbance to get himself arrested. As the police are bringing him in, they are rerouted to an airfield. The CIA has decided Thornhill has become too much of a problem to risk having him running loose. They still need more info on Vandamm's organization so they won't move in yet. The Professor explains to Thornhill that Kaplan doesn't exist and why they need Vandamm to think Thornhill is Kaplan anyway. Thornhill refuses to help until he learns the agent undercover is Eve.
Vandamm is leaving the country that night, and they need Thornhill to keep up the game long enough for Eve to finish her mission. At the base of Mt Rushmore, Thornhill confronts Vandamm again. Vandamm has a house atop Mt Rushmore that he's using as his base of operations. After an argument, Eve shoots Thornhill who is critically wounded. It's a ruse to throw off Vandamm. The CIA wants to keep Thornhill on ice until after Eve can leave the country with Vandamm, but he slips out to the house. He doesn't want her leaving with Vandamm since they've fallen for each other. Vandamm's henchman found Eve's gun filled with blanks and knows what really happened. Thornhill overhears their plan to kill her once they're in flight and sneaks into the house to help her escape.
Thornhill grabs a car, Eve grabs the figurine holding the microfilm, and off they go down the face of Mt Rushmore! They're flanked by Vandamm's men, clinging to the side of the faces, no way to go further down. Thornhill holds Eve on the cliff face as she dangles above space. Leonard, the henchman, begins to step on Thornhill's hand. A shot rings out. Leonard is dead. The CIA has arrived. Thornhill pulls up Eve...into a train sleeping berth. They're safe and now married.
MacGuffin: George Kaplan and the microfilm
Hitchcock cameo: Running for the bus with the door closing in his face
Hitchcock themes:
- Blondes
- Man falsely accused
- Sophisticated villain
- Identity
Verdict: This a wildly fun film, like Hitchcock's other action-suspense films on steroids. The only two drawbacks to the film are the completely idiotic criminals who mistake Thornhill for a man who doesn't exist and the abrupt ending which is a bit jarring. The story is an olio of ideas just thrown together with a plot about spies loosely holding it all together. It was designed with the intent of making the Hitchcock of all Hitchcock films. There are a number of excellent sequences in the film from the seaside cliff chase, to the crop duster attack, to the flight down Mt Rushmore. The most remarkable shot is a matte shot from way overhead when Thornhill flees the UN. Classic Hitchcock stuff.
The score by Bernard Herrmann is lively and memorable and was reworked as the opening music for the miniseries V in 1983 as an homage to Herrmann. The film also features a memorable opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass. It is generally cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits. The opening credits of Catch Me If You Can (2002) have been considered an homage to this sequence. This was the only Hitchcock film released by MGM.
While filming Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and Vertigo star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before "officially" offering him the North by Northwest role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.
The casting is well done although Jessie Royce Landis was only 7 years older than Cary Grant, who plays her son. Grant is still fit enough to pull off the action sequences and relies more on his wits than brute strength to get out of scrapes. Eva Marie Saint is spot on playing a spy with a romantic interest in him. Watch closely and you'll see where she had to re-dub a particular line during post-production to satisfy censors. The original line was, "I never make love on an empty stomach", but was changed to, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach". James Mason epitomizes the suave Hitchcock villain, and Martin Landau adds just the right air of creepiness. There are a number of well-known character actors in this film including Edward Platt, the Chief from Get Smart. Leo G Carroll concludes his work with Hitchcock appearing in more credited roles than any other actor.
Thornhill appears on the left side of the screen for almost the entire movie.
It was journalist Otis L. Guernsey Jr. who suggested to Alfred Hitchcock the premise of a man mistaken for a nonexistent secret agent. He was inspired by a real-life case during WWII, known as Operation Mincemeat, in which British intelligence hoped to lure Italian and German forces away from Sicily, a planned invasion site. A cadaver was selected and given an identity and phony papers referring to invasions of Sardinia and Greece. A British film, The Man Who Never Was (1956), recounted the operation.
Roger Thornhill's mother tells him jokingly, "Pay the two dollars," after he futilely attempts to shed light on his kidnapping and be exonerated from his DWI charge. The line is a reference to a Depression-era Willie Howard vaudeville sketch written by Billy K. Wells. A man is in court to pay a $2 fine for spitting on the subway, but his lawyer insists on fighting the case. As the lawyer incurs greater and greater sentences, his defendant keeps pleading, "Pay the two dollars!" This sketch also appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1945) with Edward Arnold portraying the attorney.
According to screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who worked in close collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock), the working title was "In A Northwesterly Direction." The head of the Story Department at MGM said, "Why don't you call it 'North by Northwest'?" Lehman says that he and Hitch adopted that as the new working title, always assuming that they'd come up with something better.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
The score by Bernard Herrmann is lively and memorable and was reworked as the opening music for the miniseries V in 1983 as an homage to Herrmann. The film also features a memorable opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass. It is generally cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits. The opening credits of Catch Me If You Can (2002) have been considered an homage to this sequence. This was the only Hitchcock film released by MGM.
While filming Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and Vertigo star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before "officially" offering him the North by Northwest role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.
The casting is well done although Jessie Royce Landis was only 7 years older than Cary Grant, who plays her son. Grant is still fit enough to pull off the action sequences and relies more on his wits than brute strength to get out of scrapes. Eva Marie Saint is spot on playing a spy with a romantic interest in him. Watch closely and you'll see where she had to re-dub a particular line during post-production to satisfy censors. The original line was, "I never make love on an empty stomach", but was changed to, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach". James Mason epitomizes the suave Hitchcock villain, and Martin Landau adds just the right air of creepiness. There are a number of well-known character actors in this film including Edward Platt, the Chief from Get Smart. Leo G Carroll concludes his work with Hitchcock appearing in more credited roles than any other actor.
Thornhill appears on the left side of the screen for almost the entire movie.
It was journalist Otis L. Guernsey Jr. who suggested to Alfred Hitchcock the premise of a man mistaken for a nonexistent secret agent. He was inspired by a real-life case during WWII, known as Operation Mincemeat, in which British intelligence hoped to lure Italian and German forces away from Sicily, a planned invasion site. A cadaver was selected and given an identity and phony papers referring to invasions of Sardinia and Greece. A British film, The Man Who Never Was (1956), recounted the operation.
Roger Thornhill's mother tells him jokingly, "Pay the two dollars," after he futilely attempts to shed light on his kidnapping and be exonerated from his DWI charge. The line is a reference to a Depression-era Willie Howard vaudeville sketch written by Billy K. Wells. A man is in court to pay a $2 fine for spitting on the subway, but his lawyer insists on fighting the case. As the lawyer incurs greater and greater sentences, his defendant keeps pleading, "Pay the two dollars!" This sketch also appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1945) with Edward Arnold portraying the attorney.
According to screenwriter Ernest Lehman (who worked in close collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock), the working title was "In A Northwesterly Direction." The head of the Story Department at MGM said, "Why don't you call it 'North by Northwest'?" Lehman says that he and Hitch adopted that as the new working title, always assuming that they'd come up with something better.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
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