The Times (15/Oct/1959) - Expert bit of film-making
(c) The Times (15/Oct/1959)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Grand Central Station, New York City, New York, James Mason, Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, North by Northwest (1959), The 39 Steps (1935)
EXPERT BIT OF FILM-MAKING
HITCHCOCK'S NORTH BY NORTH-WEST
A new Hitchcock film is not, perhaps, to-day the occasion it once was. The formula of flight and pursuit, of mistaken identity, of suspense artfully prolonged, will never entirely lose its appeal in the cinema, but it has nothing fresh to say, and, as the hero and those in full cry after him can proclaim when all is over, the run has been long. North by Northwest, in Vistavision and Technicolor and now to be seen at the Empire Cinema, is an expert bit of film-making, a smooth and not unsubtle piece of entertainment, but it is difficult to throw off the impression that we have seen it before.
And, in a sense, we have. There is much in the story itself that recalls Mr. Hitchcock's free and curious version of The 39 Steps, and while another film of his ended with a chase up and down, round and about, the Statue of Liberty. North By Northwest reaches its eventual climax — it runs for 136 minutes — with similar goings-on staged this time at Mount Rushmore, a national monument to America's dead Presidents.
Yet, set down in cold blood, all this seems ungrateful, for North By Northwest remains consistently exciting and enjoyable, and Mr. Hitchcock proves that he has still a few new tricks to shake down from his capacious sleeve. Take, for instance, the sequence at the bus stop. Roger (Mr. Cary Grant), a blameless advertising executive, is mistaken for a government agent by the head of a spy ring, a part played by Mr. James Mason with a nice mingling of the suave and the sinister. Pursued, like Richard Hannay, by both the police and the villains, Roger finds himself, through a series of circumstances too complex to explain, stranded in the middle of a vast, open, desolate countryside on which a main road lies like a sword. An aircraft is to be seen in the distance apparently spraying crops, and the only other being in sight, a local who soon departs on a bus remarks that that is odd since there are no crops to spray. No sooner have the local and the bus gone than the aircraft comes swooping down to machine-gun a wretched Roger lost in a waste of loneliness. And that, Mr. Hitchcock seems to be saying, is the point - Roger is never safe whether solitary in the country or jostled by crowds at Grand Central Station.
The bits of sophisticated comedy in between are beautifully managed by Mr. Grant and Miss Eva Marie Saint as a cool and self-possessed, if somewhat equivocal, young person. "I need sophisticated actors and elegant actresses." Mr. Hitchcock is reported as saying "they make a kind of counterpoint to the bizarre." It is easy to see what he means, and in Mr. Grant and Miss Saint he has them.
