Counting Down the Greatest Crime Films of All-Time: #19

Otto Penzler ranks, analyzes, & celebrates the 106 greatest crime films of all-time. Catch up on the series and find new installments daily here.

__________________________________

North by Northwest (1959)

__________________________________

TYPE OF FILM: Espionage

STUDIO: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

PRODUCER: Alfred Hitchcock

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock

SCREENWRITERS: Ernest Lehman

SOURCE: Original screenplay

RUNNING TIME: 136 minutes

PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:

Cary Grant……………………………………………..…………………………..Roger Thornhill

Eva Marie Saint…………………………………………………………………..……Eve Kendall

James Mason……………………………………………………………………..Phillip Vandamm

Leo G. Carroll…………………………………………………………………………….Professor

Martin Landau……………………………………………………………………..………Leonard

Jessie Royce Landis……………………………………………………………..…Clara Thornhill

Philp Ober………………………………………………………………………..Lester Townsand

Adam Williams……………………………………………………………………..……..Valerian

Josephine Hutchinson……………………………………………………………handsome woman

__________________________________

DID YOU KNOW?

__________________________________

As seems true of so many films, even the great ones, there were ideas that seemed good during the filming that never made it to the screen. North by Northwest is no exception. Hitchcock had several elements that he wanted to incorporate into a film, and he got Ernest Lehman to write most of them, including the famous chase across Mount Rushmore and the notion of a man being mistaken for someone who didn’t actually exist. What didn’t make it is a scene in which a speaker at the United Nations refuses to continue his speech until one of the delegates, head down on his desk, is awakened, only to be discovered to have been murdered. Another scene was planned for Cary Grant to be in an automobile factory in Detroit. As he walks through it, a car was to be built on the assembly line just behind him. When the car rolls off the line, he opens the door to drive it away, only to find a dead body inside. The entire sequence was even shot, but the director and the screenwriter could never find a way to incorporate it into to the film.

__________________________________

THE STORY

__________________________________

An advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, is abducted from the Plaza Hotel and brought to a mansion where he is bullied and threatened and nearly killed as he attempts to convince his kidnappers that he is not George Kaplan, the man they are after. The problem is that George Kaplan doesn’t exist at all, being a useful device for the U.S. Secret Service in their pursuit of a gang of spies led by Phillip Vandamm, who are trying to steal government secrets.

After escaping, Thornhill tries to track down his abductor at the U.N., only the man he is talking to is stabbed to death. His proximity to the victim makes him appear guilty, and he flees to Chicago aboard the Twentieth Century Limited, where he encounters the lovely Eve Kendall, who seduces him. On the run from both the spy ring and the police, Thornhill trusts only Eve, who turns out to be the mistress of Vandamm, although Thornhill soon learns that she is also in the employ of the CIA.

When Vandamm and his henchmen realize that Eve is a traitor, they plan to kill her, chasing her and Thornhill across the huge presidential faces of Mount Rushmore.

***

There are plot holes galore in this stylish thriller, but the action moves so briskly and so elegantly that they are noticed only upon careful reflection. North by Northwest (a title taken from Hamlet, incidentally) has often (and accurately) been described as the single film that most uses all the elements known to Hitchcock aficionados: The famous ice blonde (Eva Marie Saint), the charming leading man (Cary Grant starred in four Hitchcock movies, as did James Stewart), episodic action filled with almost unbearable suspense and, of course, the MacGuffin, the object that makes the film move forward, whether it is money, jewelry, documents, or, in this case government secrets. Hitchcock always maintained that he didn’t care what the MacGuffin was, so long as the characters thought it was important. In North by Northwest, no mention is ever made of what the secrets are, making them the ultimate Hitchcockian MacGuffin—they are nothing!

Hitchcock’s long-standing wish to film a chase sequence on Mount Rushmore was finally realized in this film, but through no help of the U.S. government or Department of the Interior, which threw endless roadblocks in his path and drew up strict rules about what could and could not be done at the site and even in the studio. (Of course, none of the chase actually occurs on Mount Rushmore, as it would have been far too dangerous; it was all shot in the MGM studio). As his revenge, Hitchcock removed the credit from the film that would have thanked the government for its cooperation.

The original working title for the film was In a Northerly Direction, which seemed cumbersome, so Breathless was suggested and seems unusually apt, considering the number of chases. Another suggestion was The Man in Lincoln’s Nose, as Hitchcock planned a scene in which Grant is standing in the giant nose of Abe Lincoln and has a sneezing spell, but it was never filmed.

Jesse Royce Landis, who played Cary Grant’s mother, was actually ten months younger than the actor.

Grant had wanted Sophia Loren for his leading lady, having worked with her on two other films and being in love with her. They had nearly married, and he hoped that working together on another film might lure her away from Carlo Ponti.

__________________________________

BEST LINE

__________________________________

As Thornhill is trying to escape the police, he tries to buy a ticket for the Twentieth Century Limited at Grand Central Station. The ticket seller, who has seen his picture in the paper as a wanted murderer, questions him about the sunglasses he’s wearing. “Something wrong with your eyes?” “Yes,” Thornhill replies. “They’re sensitive to questions.”