#CaryGrant #AlfredHitchcock #MovieReview
North by Northwest is one of my favorite Hitchcock films. It's got an exciting man on the run story starring Cary Grant as a man on the run, and it blends action, comedy and spy movie intrigue. It's a classic "wrong man" formula through the film and is enjoyable from start to finish.
It also features Eva Marie Saint as a mysterious love interest as well as James Mason and Martin Landau as excellent creepy bad guys, a thrilling Bernard Herman soundtrack, a number of very memorable sequences, including the infamous crop-duster scene, and of course, one of the most amazing climaxes atop mount Rushmore. This one is just a treat.
The film opens up with a bustling city sequence including Hitchcock's cameo as he misses his bus. I love it.
Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive who hurries off to a business meeting in the city and while there, he is taken away by two henchmen, Valerian (Adam Williams) and Licht (Robert Ellenstein), to a large, mysterious mansion.
He's brought into a library and soon meets with a dapper English fellow played by James Mason (who I also remember as Captain Nemo from the old Disney classic, but without beard. Booo! No beard!) anyhow, his assistant Leonard shows up (Martin Landau). And they continue to addresses Roger as "Kaplan, to which he's completely baffled. They think he's a spy, someone he's clearly not. Roger refuses to cooperate and go along with this, so the mysterious English guy leaves, but tells Leonard to give him a drink - which basically means to force him to drink a big ol' glass of booze so they can put him in a car and make it look like he drove off a cliff in a drunken state. The plan goes awry when he sort of comes to and is able to sort of drive away, drunk out of his mind, but slightly sober enough to realize he's totally in danger. His drive, with lots of freaky POV shots, is both amusing and terrifying, as drunken Roger goes swerving all over the place and finally slams his brakes before hitting a guy on a bike. A cop stops him, so the evil henchmen guys, who were following him, have to give up pursuit.
So Roger is in jail, drunken, and of course no one believes his story of abduction. He calls his mom, which I just think is so funny. His mom is played by Jessie Royce Landis, who is also in To Catch a Thief, another Hitchcock film I need to talk about. Anyhow, His lawyer defends him before a judge and he's given the chance to go back to the mansion with some detectives, but alas, none of the things from his time there, such as the booze shelf, are there anymore. There's even a "Mrs. Townsend" character who maintains the that he was there and was drunk. Captain Junket (played by Edward Binns - who was in 12 Angry Men that I reviewed awhile ago) is part of the investigation, and you can tell no one (other than we the viewers) believes Roger.
But he's not deterred, and he goes on the trail to find out who the real Kaplan character is.
He rushes out and grabs a taxi to the UN, to meet Mr. Kaplan, but finds out his someone completely different, and before he can get the guy to look at a photo, he's hit with a knife, and Roger does the biggest mistake in the book and removes the knife, while yelling, "listen to me, I had nothing to do with this!" Come on...
Well, he's on the run again, and heads to the train station and sneaks on a train, all the while police are after him, and the creepy goons who want to kill him. On the train he runs into Eve, played by the lovely Eva Marie Saint who, for some reason, decides to hide him. They dine together and soon there's a romance blossoming between them - or is there something sneaky about this Eve character?
Well, Roger makes is escape with her help, and she has called Kaplan for him, and he wants him to take the Indianapolis bus and to get off at a stop known as Prairie Stop, where Kaplan will meet him at 3:30 p.m..
This is out in the middle of nowhere, out in the farmland where we get to the classic crop-duster chase scene. It's one of the most excellent chases and, maybe it's just me, but I think of it whenever there's a small plane flying anywhere overhead. He manages to escape, and makes his way to... Chicago? It might just be me, but I didn't follow how he knew to get here - I might have just missed the detail, but while there and inquiring about Kaplan he spots Eve, who doesn't see him. He heads to her room and, while she seems overjoyed to see him, he remains suspicious of her. I mean, yeah, he went where she said to go and was almost killed by a small aircraft, so I'd be suspicious too.
Информация по комментариям в разработке