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North
by Northwest (1959)
In Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece of mistaken identity
- about a Manhattan advertising executive who was victimized, and
then found himself on the run as an implicated murder suspect, pursued
cross-country by a seeming conspiratorial group of spies, the police,
and the FBI:
- the memorable Saul Bass opening credits sequence
set to Bernard Herrmann's lively score, beginning with an unnatural,
pale green screen that was shot across with upper-right to lower-left
diagonal lines and vertical lines - gridlines that appeared to
make the green surface look like the gridwork of graph paper; the
major credits sliced across the criss-cross pattern of lines, before
the gridwork was soon transformed (or dissolved) into the side
of a tall New York City skyscraper - a glass-surfaced building
that diagonally filled the screen from the lower left to upper
right at an angle; on the huge wall of glass were distorted reflections
of midtown Manhattan from below, with yellow taxis at rush hour
moving back and forth
Saul Bass' Opening Credits
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- the opening kidnapping scene when baffled New York
adman Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), having lunch with his mother
Clara (Jessie Royce Landis) at the Plaza Hotel Oak Room, when he
answered the wrong page; he was mistaken for double agent 'Kaplan'
- he was seized and driven to the Long Island (Glen Cove) country
estate of 'Townsend' and strong-armed by two sinister-looking thugs;
there he was questioned by a distinguished gentleman, presumably
'Lester Townsend' (a UN diplomat) and 'Townsend's' henchman, Leonard
(Martin Landau) - in fact, Thornhill was duped and was actually
talking to Philip Vandamm (James Mason) - a foreign spy dealing
in American secrets
Innocent Roger Thornhill Mistaken as 'Kaplan'
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Kidnapped and Taken to 'Townsend' Estate
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Pursued in Elevator
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- the drunk-driving sequence when Thornhill was force-fed
large quantities of bourbon and placed in the driver's seat of
a Mercedes roadster convertible on a dark, winding ocean cliff
road later that night, when he was expected to become the victim
of a fatal, drunk-driving accident
- the hotel elevator scene when Thornhill's doting,
socialite mother Clara naively asked her son's enemy assassins in
the crowded elevator space: "You gentlemen aren't really trying
to kill my son, are you?"
- the United Nations murder scene when Roger was speaking
to the real Lester Townsend (Philip Ober) - not the phony Townsend
at the estate - after pulling a knife out of Townsend's back, Roger
was photographed holding the knife in mid-air ("He's got a knife,
look out!"); Roger blurted out: "Listen to me. I had nothing
to do with this"- but it was assumed by the crowd that Roger
had killed the UN diplomat; in a panic after dropping the knife,
he rushed out of the hall; he ran outside onto a long sidewalk and
got into an awaiting cab (filmed from high above the UN, making him
look like a tiny object being examined under a microscope)
- the film's surprising revelation in a room full of
agents - an intelligence agency chief, a paternalistic official named
the Professor (Leo G. Carroll), described a covert government operation
- Kaplan was an imaginary, fictional agent who didn't even exist,
suggesting that the government do nothing and take advantage of their "good
fortune" by continuing to use Thornhill as a decoy:
"We didn't invent our non-existent man and give him the name of
George Kaplan, establish elaborate behavior patterns for him, move
his prop belongings in and out of hotel rooms for our own private amusement.
We created George Kaplan and labored successfully to convince Vandamm
that this was our own agent hot on his trail for a desperately important
reason...If we make the slightest move to suggest that there is no
such agent as George Kaplan, give any hint to Vandamm that he's pursuing
a decoy instead of our own agent, then our agent working right under
Vandamm's very nose will immediately face suspicion, exposure and assassination,
like the two others who went before"
- the seduction scene aboard a railroad car with cool,
untrustworthy, mysterious, platinum blonde femme fatale Eve Kendall
(Eva Marie Saint), traveling cross-country with fugitive Thornhill
on the Twentieth Century Limited from NYC to Chicago; she
encouraged him in a playful manner to kiss her in the train car;
she surrendered entirely to his hands around her head as they bantered
together, even though he was basically a stranger to her; after a
porter interrupted their seduction and made up the berth's one and
only bed, she cautioned Thornhill: "It means you're going to
sleep on the floor"
At Country Crossroads: The Famous Crop-Duster
Plane Attack
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- one of the most famous and beloved set pieces ever
filmed -- Thornhill's arrival by bus at a deserted Highway 41 crossroads
(in neighboring Indiana) in the flat countryside where he had been
lured by enemy spies on the pretext of meeting and connecting with
the fabled Kaplan - his non-existent double; a stranger stood across
the road from him (in widescreen) and strangely wondered about
a nearby crop-dusting plane:
"That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops"
- the famous seven minute pursuit-attack sequence by
the deadly crop-dusting bi-plane in the open, flat and desolate Midwest
cornfield as Thornhill sought protection in a cornfield; the dramatic
editing heightened suspense when the strafing plane crashed into
an approaching semi-trailer Magnum Oil truck
- the crowded art auction scene at a chic, 1212 North
Michigan Avenue address in Chicago - where Thornhill located Eve
with her supposed lover - the fake 'Townsend' (Vandamm) and his henchman
Leonard; they were bidding for a Pre-Columbian art object (to be
used later to hide microfilmed secrets); Thornhill cleverly began
to make erratic low bids, question the authenticity of the art works,
and heckle the auctioneer so that the police would arrest him (and
he could safely escape from the evil spies)
- the shocking scene at the Mount Rushmore Monument
cafeteria when Eve pulled out a gun (loaded with blanks) from her
handbag and fired two shots at Thornhill - appearing to critically
wound him, so that jealous lover Vandamm wouldn't suspect that she
was working against him
- afterwards, the romantic reunion between Thornhill
and Eve in a cool forest setting filled with ponderosa pines, when
they kissed passionately
- the scenes of Thornhill's continued assertions to
the Professor that he was an innocent man on the run, and then when
told that George Kaplan never existed, and that he was only a decoy
created by the American intelligence agency to divert attention away
from a real CIA agent, he stressed:
"I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a
secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent
upon me"
- and then it was revealed that Eve was a double agent working undercover,
and posing as Vandamm's moll/mistress (a case of sexual exploitation)
- the cliff-dangling episode at Mount Rushmore near
Rapid City, South Dakota, after Eve and Thornhill (now recruited
to help the government and continue pretending he was Kaplan for
24 hours, to prevent Vandamm from taking microfilmed government secrets
out of the country) were clinging for their lives from the carved
rock with Presidential faces, and he quipped: "They (two previous
wives) said I led too dull a life"
The Chase Across Mt. Rushmore, Including Cliff-Dangling
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- the final, clever transition as Thornhill tugged
on Eve (hanging on the immense carved stone face) and - CUT - pulled
her up into a berth in the interior of a Pullman sleeping car (that
headed into a tunnel); the couple were last seen on their honeymoon
as they bedded down for the night in their private double-bedded
train compartment
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UN Murder Scene - the Real Lester Townsend
Thornhill's Panic and Flight From UN (aerial view)
The Professor (Leo G. Carroll)
Cross-Country Train Romance with Enigmatic Eve Kendall
Art Auction Scene in Chicago
Faked Mt. Rushmore Shooting of Thornhill by Eve
Reunion in Forest
Thornhill to Professor: "I'm an advertising man,
not a red herring"
Ending Transition to Train Bunk and Tunnel Entrance
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