North by Northwest (1959)

One of the best films ever made.

It was originally called South by Southeast with the climactic scene in the Everglades.

It's by far my favorite Hitchcock film.

Love James Mason as the sophisticated villain

From North?

An absolute favorite film. One of Hitchcock's best, one of the best of it's time, and one of the best of all films.

Perfect film

British Secret Service???

The 1978 remake of The Thirty Nine Steps includes an homage to North by Northwest. It also features Eric Porter.

Not perfect. I hate Cary Grant's drunken drive in front of an obvious rear projection street.

Also if you watch the crop-duster attack scene you can see how some shots were done in the studio.

R10 and R11, you know, I think Lucy and Ricky and Ethel and Fred didn’t really drive across the country!

DL villain Mr. Vivian Vance gets knifed!

This and NOTORIOUS are both my favorite Hitchcock movies.

Eva Marie Saint is one of a very few Hitchcock blondes left alive today.

Until this day I still lust after that house

I love this movie, it is by far Hitchcock’s most action packed film.

Nothing, not a single moment is plausible. Nothing makes sense. But Hitchcock convinces you it all makes perfect sense.

That’s why he was the greatest.

Were the two bad guys lovers?

Yes, we were!

Michael Craig was better than Grant in the same kind of role in HOUSE OF SECRET. I would have loved to see Michael as the NBNW lead. I don't like Marie Saint in the movie. She's one of the weakest Hitch blondes, but still better than Heddren of Novak. I would've cast Michael Craig and Grace Kelly instead of Grant and Saint. My favHitch movie is REAR WINDOW, Dial M for Murer a close second

Did Nancy Kelp have a small part in this? I thought I read she did, but I've seen it twice and didn't notice her.

Kulp?

The movie is wonderful and Cary Grant was very suave.

The bit parts are well cast: Maudie Pricket as the chambermaid, Ned Glass the nosy train ticket seller, the guy who plays the bitchy hotel clerk, etc.

The little boy in blue was no trouper

The scene at the auction house is great.

The title sequence was by a man named Saul Bass. He was an artist.

Martin Landau gave a hell of a performance too, as the man in love with James Mason

Hitchcock at his best: not as experimental as others from this period (Psycho, The Birds, Marnie) but damn near perfect for what it is.

Exciting score even without the movie.

North by Northwest and Charade each suffer from the same dichotomy. Cary was charming as heck but just too old for both the role and the romance.

My favorite parts of this film are the scenes with Jessie Royce Landis -who played Cary Grant's mother even though she was only seven years older than him. The look she gives him when he bribes her with $50 to get the room key from the front desk at the Plaza is priceless.

The price is $50.

[quote]DL villain Mr. Vivian Vance gets knifed!

SPOILER ALERT PLEASE

Did straight audiences back then get that Leonard was gay?

Only watch North by Northwest for the train scenes.

You're an idiot if you don't get the ending.

Best seminal material for a Simpsons parody EVER:

Grand Central Terminal still was busy and looked wonderful when North by Northwest was filmed in 1959. This was when New York Central RR still owned the place. In about ten years the Penn-Central would take over (created by merger of Pennsylvania Rail Road and once arch enemy New York Central RR). Things began to go to shit not long afterward.

Original Allred Hitchcock trailer.

R38 - Anne Bancroft is so funny in that show. Yes, yes. It's all a rich tapestry.

I think the kissing in the train compartment is a bit awkward.

It’s a great old film. I’d like to know where that gray suit came from and how many they went through filming that crop duster scene.

It’s interesting that suits could be “brushed” by a hotel dry cleaner. I wonder if they still do that.

Grant must have been really trim and fit to photograph so nicely at that age.

He lived on a diet of salad and pills.

That face tanning is odd. Is that a Brit thing? Their weather is so rainy they crave the sun.

A big shout out to composer Bernard Herrmann, who also scored Psycho, Marnie, Vertigo, The Trouble with Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much for the director. (He also did the theme for Hitchcock's TV show.)

[quote]It’s interesting that suits could be “brushed” by a hotel dry cleaner. I wonder if they still do that.

R43: It was how fine clothes were cleaned in the 18th and 19th Centuries, with water rarely used; the process continued through the Edwardian era and beyond. In the film Gosford Park, you see some a bit of the Brushing Room in the country house where clothes were brushed clean with a variety of brushes and, for stubborn stains, a bit of diluted ammonia or other bottles of nasty stuff. For a man's wool suit, a good hotel in 1959 and beyond would offer to guests pressed for time to have clothes brushed and back in the guest's room in an hour rather than use full dry cleaning methods which might take many hours or a day or two.

Here's a floor plan by Robert Kerr, author of 'The Gentleman's House: Or, How to Plan English Residences, from the Parsonage to the Palace; with Tables of Accomodation and Cost, and a Series of Selected Plans' published in 1865. It shows the ground floor of 'Bear Wood' a large 3+ story country house in Berkshire, England. At the upper left off the Men's Corridor is a Brushing Room that could have rescued Roger Thornhill from his dusty suit predicament.

[quote]I hate Cary Grant's drunken drive in front of an obvious rear projection street.

Hitchcock loved the idea of pushing technology past its abilities, but he also loved artifice, so you frequently get scenes like the unconvincing rear projection drive down the hill.

I love Hitch but he's outclassed in this area by Minnelli, who perfected it with the crazy Lana Turner driving scene in The Bad and the Beautiful, and even Douglas Sirk's rear projection driving scenes are far superior to Hitchcock's. They're not convincing but they work. Hitch's aren't convincing and they often don't work.

Grant supposedly went on to fitness and diet regimen to prepare for this film. He was 54-55 and looked divine.

Tagging onto R47

If you read care suggestions for bespoke fine wool suits, coats, skirts and other garments it is recommended they be well brushed and aired between wearing, then put away. Things should be dry cleaned little as possible, perhaps once a season or even less.

Wool naturally sheds dirt and repels water. Thus a good brushing is often all that is required if one has been careful about things.

Martin Landau was so beautiful in this film. I can imagine his Leonard being worshipped naked in bed by the older Van Damme. Long and lean, he must have been sporting a huge cock.

I came across this book abstract on a reading of the movie by John Bebee:

"Ever since the English Canadian critic Robin Wood made serious Hitchcock analysis fashionable with his book, Hitchcock's Films, it has been customary to assume that though a comedy, North by Northwest, along with other films from the same period, like Vertigo, invites a developmental reading in which the insights and values of psychoanalysis would not be out of place. Although Wood himself softpedaled the theme (and was ahead of his time in questioning the ethical appropriateness of the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as its ultimate father-figure) the movie's highly sequential scenario does lend itself to a Freudian understanding of the middle-aged hero's passing through a series of developmental stages to confront an unconscious mother complex that can finally only be resolved by encountering and submitting to patriarchal imperatives. (The most exhaustive reading of the film’s strategy along Oedipal lines has been that of Raymond Bellour, whose 116-page Lacanian exegesis leaves no image untested for evidence of Roger's need to undergo symbolic castration in order to be accepted as a legitimate male by other Americans also operating under the Law of the Father.)"

[quote]Did straight audiences back then get that Leonard was gay?

Don't be silly. There were no gay people in 1959.

Where are my royalties?

R15 You're right.

Funny story told later by Martin Landau about Hitchcock playing a joke on Cary Grant- Grant was very fussy about his appearance and had his suits specially made by a Beverly Hills tailor. Without Grant's knowledge, Hitchcock took Landau to the shop and had a couple of suits made. Grant had his valet approach Landau and ask where he got the suit he was wearing, saying there were only two places to get such a suit, Beverly Hills or Hong Kong. Landau was instructed by Hitch to say that he had gotten the suit from the MGM wardrobe department. Apparently this drove Grant crazy.

Pauline Kael had a problem with Eva Marie's makeup and said she was like a Mid-western Grace Kelly.

"It is very easy to get on with him (Hitchcock). It is not the most exciting type of work because he was such a wonderful technician and such a wonderful planner. His blue print for a print was something you just couldn't fault. He ordered all the special props himself. He knew exactly how it was going to be staged and the set ups in advance and he picked his actors as if they were props, indeed.

Although we all got along fine and he had a certain regard for his props, including the actors. He knew exactly what we could do and for that reason we were cast.

That house is spectacular!! I want too live there. I don't remember who the architect is. So amazing and great dope they cinematography.

Edward Platt, later Get Smart's Chief of Control in a bit part. Love it!!

No chemistry at all between Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant. Same with him and Grace Kelly. I have a hard time believing these pairs as attracted to each other.

I don’t agree it’s his best film, only because I think is difficult to pick a Hitchcock “the best one” film. I would say it’s possibly his most enjoyable to watch.

It is incredibly entertaining, tightly edited, action packed, looks gorgeous. It pulls you in and won’t quit. I

t’s not as cerebral as many of his other “greats.”

We're all in the same alphabet soup!

Love the frock.

R57 Saint was from New Jersey and later New York state and Kelly was from Philly.

When I went to Mount Rushmore, I went into the cafeteria just to reminisce about the NBNW scene which was filmed in that cafeteria. Fun.

The house, R59, was an homage to Frank Lloyd Wright but, sadly, it was only a set and a small model for some shots. Never existed as a real house. So many of us love it that you have to wonder why no one builds it!

A Vanity Fair article on the Vandamm "house" and its impact.

And a blog piece about the use of architecture, real and in film sets and models, in the film.

Sorry, the right link this second time

[quote] "The three of you together. Now that's a picture only Charles Addams could draw"

I always wonder how many people got the reference to "The Addams Family".

Hitchcock was a friend of Addams.

When I win the lottery I am definitely building that house!

New York Central's "20th Century Limited" was *the* train to take between New York City and Chicago for most of its glorious history that ended in 1967). It was quite simply the most famous train in world, as such no wonder Hitchcock used it as setting for "North by Northwest".

New York Central's arch rival the Pennsylvania RR had their own train to Chicago to NYC out of Penn Station the "Broadway Limited". Until merger of PRR and NYCRR the two railroads battled it out for dominatce along the NYC to Chicago route.

Thanks to mountain range getting between NYC and Chicago from the city isn't exactly easy.

New York Central's mainline took trains up along Hudson River to Albany then west (or east) along Great Lakes to Chicago. NYCRR called this their "Waterline Route" which among other things they promoted fact passengers could sleep better.

PRR OTOH having to deal with those mountains was another story. They built the famous "Horseshoe Curve" just outside of Altoona, PA to get trains up and over the mountains and on their way west or east bound. This often meant trains would have to stop and have helper engines attached if locomotive providing power on the point couldn't handle job of getting train up and down the mountains.

It is this jerking, screeching and less than smooth ride you see in film "The Women" where Countess de Lave exclaims "where is this dreadful train taking us?". Miriam Aarons replies "we're in the mountains". Anyone familiar with PRR's Broadway Limited would have understood.

Amtrak still runs their versions of the Broadway and 20th Century limited trains, but they are simply not the same.

Other reason that likely factored into Hitchcock choosing NYCRR's 20th Century Limited was of course the beautiful scenery passengers were treated to as they sped along Great Lakes area.

[quote]It was quite simply the most famous train in world

I beg your pardon!

[quote] It was quite simply the most famous train in world

Like hell

You guys can have the faux FLW house. I will take the mansion on the Gold Coast of Long Island. The forecourt tells me all I need to know about the splendor awaiting me inside.

*

It really is one of Hitchcock's best. I saw it as a boy and it gave me a lot of ideas about what sophistication was.

Grant getting his suit "sponged and pressed" by the hotel staff (in 20 minutes no less).

Grant ordering a gibson. Having tickets to the Winter Garden. (Which I think, if I got the timeline right, would have been to see West Side Story.)

Fabulous stuff.

I DETEST mountains!

Who was hiding in a nostril @ Mt. Rushmore, or was that a parody I saw somewhere. Anyway it was funny...intentional or not.

R74 I assumed they were going through the Rockies.

Mt Rushmore was a good choice

He'd already used Lady Liberty, r84.

Grant stayed tan to avoid time in the makeup chair, so he could arrive on set later.

Mt Rushmore was also a good symbolic end to a Cold War story.

Interesting that Eve had a separate cabin on the train, while Vandamm and Leonard shared a cabin. I'm sure Vandamm whiled away the overnight hours getting a good pounding from Leonard. Nothing would have pleased Leonard more than to fling Eve from the top of Mt. Rushmore, leaving Vandamm to be his exclusively.

The implication in the film is that Leonard is gay, not Van Damm. If Van Damm wasn't straight the plot with him being seduced by counteraspy Eve Kendall would make no sense.

It would be if he was bisexual…

"Something wrong with your eyes?" Yes, they're sensitive to questions."

R90 But he isn't...

I had a hard time getting into this film when I was a kid. I watched Psycho when I was in 2nd grade and became a Hitchcock fan for life, but his ‘spy thrillers’ and films like this one were harder for me to get into. I definitely did not appreciate NxNW until I gave it a full reappraisal a couple years ago via HBO Max’s TCM hub stream. It’s a magnificent film, hilarious from start to finish, with a few great shocks and several nail-biting sequences.

I cannot wait for Warner to FINALLY release this on a 4K disc.

Actually (correcting myself) Eve met Van Damm at a party "and saw only his charm" as she says. I think the two were having an affair already when she was recruited by American intelligence.

R80 Ernest Lehman also wrote the screenplay to West Side Story (1961). Wonder if he was already approached or contracted to do that when he wrote this screenplay?

Just saw this on TCM. How has DL missed the detail where the woman behind a desk at the auction, instructed to call the cops on Thornhill, DIALS THE PHONE WITH A PENCIL?