Personally, I was confused by the film North by Northwest. I’m not exactly certain what the name of the movie has to do with the actual plot either.

However, what did catch my attention was how a clueless man was roped into running for his life, seemingly for reasons that he was not responsible for. Even law enforcement seemed to have their minds set against him, without cluing him into the situation. I know it is a very unrealistic scenario to find yourself in to begin with, but there is something to be said about the ethical decision behind using an innocent man for public security matters without his explicit consent.

As humorous as the movie was, I was a little frustrated at the resolution because he is essentially pressured into his involvement in the undercover operation, and still ends up losing the woman he hopes to win over. At no point in time was he given the option to not participate. To me that represents a movie whose plot was not thoroughly thought out, and opting for a similar ending to waking from  a dream, or simply a director with disregard for free-will.

I expected North by Northwest to leave me a little more unsettled than it did.  I still liked it, and it was cool to see Hitchcock make his characteristic cameo, as he does in all his films, just a minute or so into the movie, but the film itself wouldn’t come to mind as something to watch on Halloween.

The scenery in different parts of the film include a lavish mansion, crop fields, and Mt. Rushmore, which is an interesting mixture of places if you ask me.  In some ways, the varied scenes contribute the confusing plot of a man who has been mistaken for someone else and is constantly on the run.  The same man is later mistakingly convicted of a murder at a United Nations meeting.  Though being placed in this situation would definitely be unfortunate, Roger Thornhill, the main character played by Cary Grant, is so suave and casual about everything that happens to him it felt more to me like I was watching something along the line of a James Bond movie, without the melodramatic villain.

The ending of the movie was interesting, as I have never seen anybody fight on top of the presidents’ heads at Mt. Rushmore.  Though I would have preferred to watch Psycho or The Birds, given the special occasion, I am glad that I can check another iconic film off my list.

Last week I attended the screening of North by Northwest, and while it wasn’t bad, I definitely left feeling underwhelmed. Part of this may be hindsight: since the movie industry has progressed so much since 1959 the things about NbNW that were brand spanking new are now standard fodder. Being 50 years old definitely put a damper on being able to enjoy it as well: the blatant sexism was so bad at times that it takes the viewer right out of the movie experience. In that same vein there were several pieces of dialogue that I personally thought were laughingly bad.

However, I will give credit where credit is due: the thriller portion of the movie was very good. The plot was unexpected, there were a suitable amount of surprises and mystery, and I never quite understood what was going on until the very end. There’s also the standard trope of the drab, regular person (the main character) that is thrown into extraordinary circumstances and must fight their way out, or die trying. In addition, the infamous innuendo at the end was fantastically executed: I almost didn’t catch it until a friend pointed it out.

Overall it wasn’t a terrible movie but I’m not sure if I would recommend it as a recreational viewing instead of part of a film class or something.

North by Northwest mirrors many of themes echoed by art during the Cold War. Portraying Roger Thornhill as an innocent man running away from the government ostensibly represents the growing mistrust in government at the turn of the decade leading into the 1960s. The government’s scope and power was growing as the Cold War with the Soviet Union intensified. I think this film was a clever way for Alfred Hitchcock to get his opinion about government’s role as big brother across without being seen as a traitor to the U.S.–especially important at a time when Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee was on the prowl, indicting film industry magnates like the Hollywood Ten. Although I don’t fully appreciate the hype around this movie, I did enjoy its hidden meaning.

When North by Northwest hit the theaters in 1959, it provided both critical and commercial acclaim. Many critics raved over the Hitchcock classic. As David Gurney exclaimed for Common Sense Media, “the film is a true cinematic pleasure with an impressive pedigree.” For me, however, the movie failed to live up to its “100%” on Rotten Tomatoes and “5/5” on Empire‘s review . By no means did I find the movie “bad’ per se, as I did enjoy watching various scenes of the film, but the movie didn’t seem as memorable as I thought it would be. It seemed that plot, dialogue, and acting performances were all sort of jaded. In particular, Cary Grant’s performance of Roger Thornhill didn’t really bring the character alive — especially for a character who goes through various conflicts throughout the film. The movie is filled with an array of suspenseful or enigmatic situations, yet he seems to react the same way in each situation. I realize however, in making this judgement, that my view is quite biased. I’ve watched very few movies from the early and mid 20th century, and the modern movies I watch today often overflow with special cinematographic effects and vivid backgrounds. It’s entirely possible that I’m simply not used to the feel of these older movies, which could have distracted me from the movie’s stronger aspects, resulting in my mundane review. I plan to watch more of Hitchcock’s films in the future, and hope to be able to appreciate Hitchock as the “master of suspense” he’s so commonly referred to as.

Last Friday, I attended Rose’s screening of North by Northwest, a critically acclaimed, Hitchcock-directed film with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. I of course had high expectations going in.

I was more amused than I was moved by the thriller. I was particularly shocked by the level of sexual innuendo in a movie made in the ’50s. The writers dedicated long scenes to sexually suggestive dialogue between Cary Grant’s and Eva Marie Saint’s characters. The final scene of the movie, in which a train enters into a tunnel, was quite obviously a phallic symbol. Hitchcock has admitted that this was no accident. He purposefully inserted that scene into the film to be sexually suggestive.

When I think of the ’50s, I imagine it as the era of I Love Lucy, a show in which the married main characters were shown to be, unrealistically, sleeping in separate beds. CBS, the channel on which I Love Lucy was shown, even banned the word “pregnant” from being said on the show, despite the fact that the main character was obviously expecting. However, in contrast to this rigidity and reserve of media, North by Northwest and Marilyn Monroe represented the more sexually liberal side of pop culture at the time.

In these two contrasting pop culture-spheres, we see that the role of women in film and television remained limited. Either the woman played an the obedient housewife or she played the sexual object. In sexually reserved media like I Love Lucy, female characters were portrayed mostly in domestic settings, working to please and dote upon the men in their lives, whilst being dependent and obedient upon them. More sexually liberal media like North by Northwest, instead, made women into one-dimensional characters purely present to serve as the object of the main man’s fantasies. Although the atmosphere has changed in the modern era, with more independent, complicated, three dimensional female characters taking over film and television, we must still be sensitive to presence of franchises remaining steadfast to painting women in sexist, unrealistic ways. For example, the James Bond movies continue putting a woman in every film to simply serve as an objectified sex object for Bond. These portrayals are unacceptable and we can no longer have such a primitive view of women in the media and in society. Media needs to recognize its influence on society and make its representations of women more realistic.

North by Northwest, a classic, done by the master of suspense himself Alfred Hitchcock. The movie revolves around a man named Roger Thornhill, who always happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether it be at the beginning, being mistaken for a fictional man named George Kaplan and subsequently being kidnapped, or being accused of a homicide he did not do, the story is driven by these mishaps. Thornhill stumbles into scene after scene until he finds himself in a government attempt to foil the man after him, Vandamm, while also meeting his future wife Kendall.

This film is very different from Hitchcock’s normal films. This film is much more comedic than his others, and relies much less on suspense and shock, although those elements are still present. The movie at its heart is a thriller, featuring a plot that becomes increasingly complex, adding characters and twists to the story over time. At some points, I feel the twists are over used to drag out the story and extend it for longer than it needs to be. I often find myself disliking the use of multiple twists as it embodies bad storytelling to me, but they were used effectively and not abhorrent like some more modern movies. Overall it was a solid movie, one that I could see having the social impact it did in the 50s and 60s, and one impact that cannot be understated is how it was a building block for the many spy thrillers to come (Dr. No I’m looking at you). Showing how cool spies can be on the big screen, being thrown into all these crazy situations, like the crop duster scene, and coming out unfazed. This movie demonstrated that the villain can be just as cool and collected as the hero, and how they can be someone you don’t really hate right away. North by Northwest has everything that’s great about spy films while being one of the first to do it, and luckily for us future filmmakers caught on to this awesome way of telling a story.

I would not say too much about the film -North by Northwest- itself. Instead, by reading other students’ post, I kind of realize there’s a huge distinction among each individual’s focus and taste and therefore I want to talk about how people can actually tell a film to be great or not and how the film awards are awarded.

By reading the posts, some people find North by Northwest worth its fame while others might not be that thrilled since they originally expect highly of it. Well. First, the film is quite early, probably order then anyone watching it last Friday and therefore a lot of comments and awards had already been granted to it before we actually watch it. New York Times said it was the “year’s most scenic, intriguing and merriest chase” and it was ranked the 40th greatest American film by the American Film Institute.

Whether the film is good or not, it is a super popular film at least. And by this assumption, people in the latter generation all want to watch it and to see “one of the world’s best”. Some people may not be captured by the title e or plot at first but its fame, for example, me. Especially it was directed by Hitchcock. Then, the feeling toward the film might not be realistic and fair as it supposed to be. The feeling after the film is also just ‘oh, I watched it’, and now I am on the same page with most people who usually assume that people should watch it.

I think it is not a good way to watch a film. I mean, watching a film could be a way to catch up with the trend but to me, it’s also an entertainment or relaxing moment. People should have their own real feelings about this film, not depending on any other comments or effect. To this extent, I’m wondering what’s the role of ranking and awards.

I went into North by Northwest expecting to be thrilled. That’s what I understand a Hitchcock film to be, both from hearsay and personal experience with some of his other works. And while North by Northwest did entertain me for the duration of its run, I find that I am less enthralled with it as I mull it over. The immediate concerns are of course its dated depiction of women and their role within the plot of the film. The one major female, Eve Kendall, is introduced to us only as a potential romantic interest for the film’s protagonist, Roger Thornhill. And as she evolves over the course of the film, her actions and choices are entirely dictated by her relationship with Thornhill. Though I would argue the film makes a more subtle but nearly as egregious sin of storytelling in just being excessively dictated. By this, I mean that each event in the film follows the previous almost entirely because the plot demands that it be so, not because the characters would logically follow this course of action. This is particularly evident in the first half of the film, where Thornhill’s path precipitates from two events entirely outside of his control – being misidentified as George Kaplan, and then being framed for the murder of Lester Townshend. Because he is not making choices that dictate the path the story follows, while the story can be genuinely surprising and thrilling during its run, the film fails to remain memorable. The plot when viewed as a whole fails to congeal in any meaningful way, because Roger Thornhill is more akin to a leaf on the wind than an active protagonist in his story until the very end, when he chooses to rescue Eve. And for the two reasons I’ve described, I think that while Hitchcock certainly can keep his title has the master of suspense, in this film he may have sacrificed his characters and story solely for the end of maintaining that suspense.

I never considered myself much of a movie person, but thanks to Rose Scholars and my friends, I’ve started seeing (and enjoying) some classic films. When I told my parents that the film of the week was North by Northwest, they told me that I would be sure to love it, as it is one of the greatest films ever produced. I did some research and noted that Rotten Tomatoes, a movie database, gave the film a 100% rating. However, as I watched the movie, I never understood what was so great about it.

The film is about an innocent man, Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken for George Kaplan and consequently kidnapped and hunted by Vandamn. The first scene, which features Vandamn trying to get Thornhill to drink himself to death, concludes with Thornhill driving around steep mountain roads while severely intoxicated. I believe that this scene was supposed to be considered to be thrilling, but I found it simply comical. Later, in an exchange between Thornhill and Lester Townsend, a man throws a knife, killing Townsend, which Lester then pulls out of the man, setting himself up as the murderer. This seemed rather dumb to me and a cheesy way to set the plot.

The ending, which clearly is supposed to be the most thrill-inducing part of the film, shows Thornhill and Eve Kendall, a woman who was originally working against him but has since fallen in love with Thornhill, fleeing from Vandamn’s men by climbing Mount Rushmore. The Professor, a man now working to protect Thornhill, kills off the two men and Eve and Roger get away. The two presumably live a happy life in peace.

These “action” scenes just seemed so dry to me, so it left me wondering what made this movie so popular back in the 1950s. I have not seen a lot of movies from that time period, but solely from this movie, I can conclude that cinematography and technology were no way as advanced as they are today. It seems as if this movie was simply far ahead of its time when it was initially created, as to me, it is a rather dull thriller compared to newer movies.

Most Alfred Hitchcock films are nail-biters, full of tosses and turns that are all too unpredictable. And “North by Northwest” is no different. Roger, just an ordinary man, finds himself lost in a secret battle between government agents and a crime organization. He has nothing to do with it. A few thieves misinterpret him for someone else, and he soon becomes a pawn in their game. I could go on and on about the rest of the plot, but that’s not what makes this movie interesting. It’s that even though Roger is still ordinary Roger, he becomes the figure for which he is mistaken at the beginning of the film. He becomes this adventurous agent who roams around in no particular direction, him versus the bad guys, him trying to win the girl. Not only the audience but also Roger himself forgets who Roger even is. It’s as if he’s this unrealistic agent/spy/hero all along. At first he just wants to be Roger. He doesn’t want to meddle with these crooked people or be a pawn in their game. But then he settles into his new life. This is something that often happens to us on campus. We all go through something unfamiliar or uncomfortable, classes, experiences, decisions alike. We may not be happy with something required, but it’s required. We have to accept it, deal with it, and keep moving. Of course, Roger is wrongfully wanted all over the country, so his situation is much more dramatic. But like many of us he accepts the challenge and plays the game until the end.

The Wikipedia page for North by Northwest describes the film as a “thriller”. I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion. The film is about an advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken for a spy, George Kaplan, and kidnapped by a criminal, Vandamm, who thinks Kaplan is pursuing him. Thornhill then goes on a mission to find Kaplan, and along the way meets Eve Kendall, who is Vandamm’s girlfriend, and a government informant trying to take him down.  The film is full of decidedly non-thrilling scenarios: visiting an empty hotel room with your disapproving mother, walking around in public and having no one recognize you, even though you are a fugitive with your picture in all the newspapers, shaving your face with a tiny razor (even though, as above, you are a fugitive, and should probably be trying to look less like the picture in those papers…) For the most part, the moments of peril in the film are so ridiculous as to be comical. After the initial kidnapping, Vandamm tries to kill Thornhill by forcing him to drink an entire bottle of liquor and then putting him in a car and sending him rolling towards the edge of a cliff. Thornhill, of course, regains enough awareness to turn the wheel and avoid the cliff. The tense chase scene that should follow is instead a patently ridiculous sequence of a very drunk man driving (though he does cause real peril to others on the road).

In the second major action scene of the movie, Roger Thornhill is told by Eve Kendall, who he does not realize is working for Vandamm, to meet George Kaplan at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. After waiting for several minutes, a crop duster plane flies after him, makes several attempts to run him over (fly him over?) and shoots at him. The plane then crashes into an oil tanker on the road and explodes. Again, not thrilling. Why a plane, of all things? If Vandamm is such a sophisticated criminal, why are all his murder plots so nonsensical and logistically complex?

I thought North by Northwest was intended to be a comedy about three people who are all incompetent. The main criminal, Vandamm, spends the entire film trying to kill George Kaplan (or Thornhill, really) but as above, he chooses the worst possible plans. He also fails to realize that his girlfriend is the real spy until an associate literally shoots him with a gun loaded with blanks. How does a man who seems very bad at vetting his associates and eliminating his enemies manage to acquire and sell government secrets?

As for Eve Kendall, she remains with Vandamm as a government informant, to try to find out how he smuggles his information out of the country. We don’t know how long she’s been with Vandamm, but it seems like it’s been a while, and she hasn’t figured it out yet. Thornhill, of course, learns that Vandamm is using art he buys at auctions to smuggle microfilm after just a couple of days of being involved in the whole affair. Kind of embarrassing for Ms. Kendall.

And finally, Thornhill himself. Having been kidnapped because you’ve been mistaken by some criminals for a George Kaplan, why do you go to George Kaplan’s hotel room, and otherwise do things that would convince the casual observer that you are George Kaplan? Thornhill bumbles from one situation to the next, but he’s so lucky you never worry about his safety.

North by Northwest really doesn’t work for me as a thriller. But it’s an enjoyable enough movie if you think about it as a comedy about some incompetent, lucky people.

The film North by Northwest was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Before Stan Lee was doing cameos in the Marvel Universe films, Alfred Hitchcock was making background appearances in his films. As someone who really enjoys films from this era, I was looking forward to watching this film. I had seen many Hitchcock films, such as Psycho and Dial M for Murder, and I also liked films with the actor Cary Grant, who has also acted in His Girl Friday and Charade(with Audrey Hepburn!!!). I enjoyed watching this film because it had numerous unexpected plot twists that made it super entertaining. Every time you thought the path had smoothened for the main character, another twist would occur. I would definitely recommend this film to other people.

Today, we saw a suspensefulm on Friday movie night. I think a little scary movie, like this, is very Holloween-ish. The film is about a man being kidnaped for being seen as captan which he is not.

This is a film about modern technology. In the early nintennth century, when cars, plane and telephone were new invention, they palyed huge roles in the movies, such as the part when the captan was being kidnaped, and people tried to faked that he was self-killed, they put him in a car. They also tried to killed him by airplane. We can see how much the social development in technology influence the art of movie making and setting, eventhough many times when we watch the temporary movies we don’t feel the frequent use of smart phone, or airplane, or social networks, but after seeing this film, I started to realize how prevalent they are in the movie that we see nowadays.

And of cource, no story could be without a love story, including this movie that we watched. In the movie, the main character falled in love with the FBI agency who was undercovered in the killer group. He saved her at last, which made this film a happy ending. Also, I find it very funny that the character in the film who was mistaken as the captain was pereived so handsome and charming that almost every ladies in the movie was attracted to him. For example, one very interesting scene was at the hospital, when he escaped and jumped in to the room next to the one he was locked, the lady in that room was first terrified and then seeing his face, her word “stop” turned into a very shy and tempting sound, and that’s a little fun sprinkle in the suspense movie, this little laughing point.

The setting of the film was very luxury, and included a lot of famous buildings, such as the united nation building, the luxury hotel at New York and Chicago.

This film has been nominated by three acadamy awards. The name of the film was very confusing and drew people’s attentions to it. As said by the main character of the film, Hitchcock “It’s a fantasy. The whole film is epitomized in the title—there is no such thing as north-by-northwest on the compass.” Even though as seeing from now there are may places in the film that don’t explain well, and seemingly too coincident and not realistic, but I can see that in the standard in 1959 when the film was first came out, the large crowd of audience amazed by its fatasy settings as well as superior acting skills of the actors would be a great support to the film. As described by the hollywood review, at the premier of the film  ‘A packed audience at the preview loved every cliff-hanging moment of this Alfred Hitchcock thriller.’

North by Northwest was certainly an interesting film. I’m a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s television series and after watching this film, I have to say that I prefer his production of shorter episodes. I think this movie was more action-based than what I consider a psychological thriller, so I was left a little bit disappointed. I didn’t think the movie’s characters were that compelling and I found the plot to be a little bit dry and all over the place. It started off as a typical psychological thriller where you don’t know if they main character has lost his mind or if it is in fact true that the entire world is conspiring against him. Somewhere in the middle, it turned into more of a James Bond spy movie, and by the end it was borderline absurdist. I would definitely hesitate to call it ‘the greatest film of all time’ as others have listed it as.

One thing that I noticed was that a lot of the movie’s thematic and plot elements reminded me of more modern films. This speaks hugely about how influential this work is as an art form and I definitely appreciate that even if it isn’t my favourite movie.

I don’t understand how this movie is considered to be one of ‘the greatest films of all time’.

I don’t know exactly how true this statement is as I’m pulling it from Wikipedia, but that’s irrelevant because this still sums up the film’s integrity to logic: “Lehman would sometimes repeat this story himself, as in the documentary Destination Hitchcock that accompanied the 2001 DVD release of the film. In his 2000 book Which Lie Did I Tell?, screenwriter William Goldman, commenting on the film, insists that it was Lehman who created North by Northwest and that many of Hitchcock’s ideas were not used. Hitchcock had the idea of the hero being stranded in the middle of nowhere, but suggested the villains try to kill him with a tornado. Lehman responded, “but they’re trying to kill him. How are they going to work up a cyclone?” Then, as he told an interviewer; “I just can’t tell you who said what to whom, but somewhere during that afternoon, the cyclone in the sky became the crop-duster plane.”

To summarize this movie, it is a glamorous version of the  gif from the Telgu film where a man drifts underneath a train on a horse.

While viewing North by Northwest today, I was struck by how clearly the film catered to wealthy white men (understandably, since they would have been Hitchcock’s customers). Firstly, the “everyman” main character is a white business executive with enough money to go on tipping and bribing pretty much anyone he meets, just from his pocket money (since he wouldn’t have access to a bank as a federal fugitive). Not only that, he’s athletic enough to climb wherever he wants in full business attire, clever (enough to get out of the auction), and supposedly handsome enough to attract at least 4 women (the two instances we see being pretty blondes and apparently at first sight). This is pretty much the standard white male power fantasy.

Then there’s the dismissal of the entire public (composed entirely of white people) as a actual threat to him, with absolutely no one recognizing him and taking action at any point except the main cast and law enforcement (and even the police need prompting outside NYC). And then there’s the fact Roger (the MC) steals a presumably poorer man’s truck (and with it his livelihood) and we’re supposed to root for him anyways. Roger is just generally rude and demanding of everyone the film has marked unimportant, from the various hotel staff he questions to the two policemen who get him out of the auction.

Finally, Roger has ridiculous amounts of plot armor (because of course the ideal rich white man can’t fail). First is his luck avoiding all obstacles driving drunk in the dark. Then there’s the aforementioned failure of the entire public to recognize him. Neither train conductor checks the toilet to ask for tickets. The crop-dusting plane flies over his head in the second pass when the first pass showed it clearly could have flown lower, then crashes into the oil tanker (why does the pilot have no sense of self-preservation? There must have been a pilot because they didn’t have drones.) The oil tanker conveniently doesn’t explode in any direction except up, and there happens to be someone to stop and gape so Roger can steal his truck. Roger’s box of matches manages to survive all his ordeals immaculately enough not to look out of place in Vandamn’s Mt. Rushmore house. The knife-wielding villain (and isn’t it odd none of them have their own guns?) conveniently decides to throw himself at Roger (risking missing and falling) when we know he’s confident in his knife-throwing (since he killed the UN diplomat that way) and he was presented both Roger’s and Eve’s backs as targets. Finally, Roger manages to hold on to the monument after having his hand crushed long enough for rescue despite starting to slip even before getting stepped on. And, of course, the mysterious organization the FBI was so worried about is completely ignored in the end.

If one was willing to turn off one’s brain, I guess the film was enjoyable enough. As is, it was mostly just laughably unrealistic and cringe-worthy.

So… can we just talk about how the only role of the female main character is to be objectified by the men in the movie and without her looks her character would be useless. Also the way Mr.Thornhill tried to seduce her was really creepy and if anyone every said that to me I would run away. All in all I don’t want to make this blog post longer than it needs to be Alfred Hitchcock needs to do better. Women are not objects or something you just have sex with, we are human beings. The movie also had the auction scene in which Mr.Thornhill said that she had no feelings to hurt. That is absurd. I think he thinks women who engage in one night stands lack emotions. Why is it frowned upon for women to have one night stands but for guys its ok. Like women are supposed to keep their legs closed in society and men are allowed to do whatever they want and have sex with as many people as possible. This movie and society in general needs to realize it is 2017 (yes I realize this movie is old) and that this is not ok.

Who is Mr.Kaplan? Why is Roger abducted? Who are the people living in the UN official’s house? For a famous suspense movie from Hitchcock, this movie had a surprisingly not surprising ending. Honestly, it is  not difficult to predict the double spy nature of Ms Eve, the cliche love story between Roger and Eve, and how the bad guys are always doomed.

Many details in the movie did not make sense. I couldn’t figure out how Roger and Eve could possibly survive in the last scene on the Rushmore, where Vandamm stepped on the only hand Roger had holding onto the cliff. I also was confused why Eve and Roger was talking so loud in Leonard’s house without them suspecting. And how on earth could they be so stupid chasing after the wrong Mr. Kaplan all the time. Like many other superhero movies, American police officers seemed to be useless. Not to mention a UN official can just be approached by a random, armed person and killed by a knife. Don’t people have to go to security that detects metal? The ending scene was abrupt and sudden, left many people’s mouth still open.

After watching this movie, I couldn’t remember anything that was meaningful to my life, any inspirations I could take away, or even lessons I learned. I wasn’t emotionally touched, or intellectually challenged. I hate to compare it with the popcorn movies like Transformers, but this is how I felt. Maybe I lack the life experience to appreciate the hidden implications, but I was disappointed.