Aside from a few unrealistic special effects and the occasional cheesy line, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) is a movie worth watching, especially for those who truly appreciate film. In spite of the time it was filmed, this film exemplifies techniques and style that are arguably better than some recent films that have been poorly done, lacking any thought process whatsoever. Known for his use of the camera and delivering perfect shot after perfect shot, Hitchcock yet again delivers a film to pioneer the way we edit. His shots have a purpose behind them, and to be honest, films running over two hours long often run the risk of losing the audience, but because of skilled techniques, this film keeps the attention of its viewers for the entire ride.
From the beginning, before we even know the real premise of the movie, there is a shot of the three men (including Roger Thornhill) sitting down to eat which then cuts to two men lingering near the entrance, foreshadowing what is to come. By showing these two men in a separate shot instead of in an establishing shot, combining them with everybody in the restaurant, our attention is drawn to them and their suspicious demeanor. After they approach Roger, it is evident they are up to something, but the audience is kept guessing at the severity until the camera switches from a view of the front to a view of the back, revealing a gun, thus showing what kind of trouble Roger is in and setting up the premise of the film. From this point on, it is very fast paced and, like The New York Times review points out, the setting is constantly changing, giving the audience new things to see every step of the way.
We see an example of these fast paced changes in the first few scenes of the movie. Within a short span of time, we have traveled from the taxi into the restaurant, then to the home of Mr. Townsend, through a busy street, into the police station, and finally into a courtroom, all with surprisingly smooth transitions that do not lose the audience. Hitchcock displays this continuity by transitioning from the scene in which Roger is being questioned in the courtroom to the scene in which the actual trial is being held in the very same room, thus having minimal changes and evidently showing the passing of time without boring the audience by watching Roger sleep away his liquor and try to recover from the inevitable hangover. Hitchcock does this numerous times throughout the film, often to do away with uneventful scenes, but in the case of the scene following Eve’s “clever” flirting as an attempt to get into Roger’s bed, the camera shows the train in motion as time passes while the sun sets, this time not to avoid an uneventful scene, but rather to indicate what happened between the two of them without actually having to show it, saving himself from censorship yet still creating the idea he intended.
Moving back to Eve’s flirtation (if that’s the proper label), The New York Times review believes that Hitchcock is not “really serious about [his] mystery” due to the occasional humorous anecdotes and side comments. I disagree. I think Hitchcock is very serious about it, which is evident in all of the suspense he creates, and the bits of humor mixed in are simply to lighten the mood and keep the audience from actually falling off of their seats since, at various points, they are on the edge waiting, the very effect a good mystery should cause. I think this is also an important tactic for character development; should we really believe that every single character lacks a sense of humor?
Hitchcock does a good job of making this movie extremely believable, so why ruin it? The only mistake I noticed in the film was during the dinner scene on the train. He followed the 180-degree rule beautifully, but when the camera moved from showing his face to an over the shoulder shot, Roger went from holding his glass to having it on the table, a very minor mistake considering the movie as a whole. With that aside, we must consider the fact that simple things like graphic matches have a large impact on believability. I think the best example of that is the scene with the plane in the cornfield. Shooting it in the middle of a sunny day makes it realistic and keeps it in sync with the plot of the film. It also allows us to really see what is going on instead of having dark, blurred images from a late evening setting. This is not to say that the scene atop Mount Rushmore should have been in daylight. It fit to be at night and made the scene more suspenseful; climbing down would have been less of a struggle in broad daylight with full vision, just as hiding from a plane would have been a bit easier in the dark. Besides, without this scene we would not have the final embrace between Roger and Eve, showing a classic example of continuity as they remain in virtually the same position on their train ride back to New York; an unlikely happy ending, but exactly what the audience was hoping for, making sure Hitchcock does not disappoint from start to finish.
