Movies
North by Northwest (1959)
『北北西に進路を取れ』1959年
Fan page about the movie “North by Northwest” (1959), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.
The Story
Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a successful advertising executive in New York City whose life takes a dramatic twist one day when he meets some business associates for drinks at the Plaza Hotel. He is mistaken for a man named “George Kaplan” and kidnapped by a couple of criminals who spirit him away to a country estate that bears the name of “Townsend”. At the estate, Roger meets Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), who, convinced that “Kaplan” isn’t going to cooperate, has his minions get Roger drunk, put behind the wheel of a car and sent careening down a dangerous mountain road. Roger somehow manages to negotiate his way down the road, but he is arrested for drunk driving. No one, including his mother, believes his story, and while tying to solve the mystery by himself, he is entangled in the proceedings of a murder at the United Nations, in a way that makes everybody think he committed it. Desperately, he continues his quest for “Kaplan”, boarding a train to Chicago - but in the meantime, we have learned that “Kaplan” is a fictitious character created by the CIA as part of a plot to trap master spy Phillip Vandamm. The fake agent was created to divert suspicion from the agency’s real agent, who has been able to get close to Vandamm. To interfere now, the CIA chief (Leo G. Carroll) contends, would only endanger the agent, so he elects to let Roger deal with Vandamm and the police as best he can.
On the train, Roger meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who covers for him as police search the train. Eve is part of Phillip’s operation, but when the train arrives in Chicago, she offers to contact “Kaplan” for Roger and to arrange a meeting with the man. The long, breathless chase all over the U.S. goes on and on - until finally, Roger solves the puzzle and gets the girl, while the CIA agents arrive and capture Vandamm and his thugs.
North By Northwest is a movie that has rarely been matched for its mixture of humor and thrills - and it features two of the most famous action sequences ever shot: the crop-dusting sequence, in which Roger Thornhill is attacked by a plane, and the final Mount Rushmore sequence, where the four Presidents’ faces serve as a backdrop for the fight between good and evil.
Star Bios
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alexander Leach on January 18, 1904, in Bristol (England). He began his show business career with an acrobatic comedy troupe in England. Following a tour of the U.S., he emigrated there and performed in stage musical comedies before making his film debut in This Is The Night (1932). Grant’s first Hollywood years provided for a variety of roles in costume dramas, war films, adventure pictures, and topical comedies. He built, slowly and steadily, a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most dependable leading men, and he finally hit his stride in a string of sophisticated screwball comedies, beginning with Topper (1937), in which he evolved the debonair, witty, uninhibited screen persona that ultimately brought him superstardom. The next several years saw Cary at his peak, alternating classic comedies (such as 1937’s The Awful Truth, 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, 1940’s His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story) with similarly well remembered dramas (1941’s Penny Serenade), adventure films (1939’s Gunga Din) and thrillers like Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946). He continued his hugely successful career until the mid-1960s, the most outstanding performances of that period probably being his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, To Catch A Thief (1955) and North By Northwest (1959). Grant’s seemingly ageless appearance enabled him to collaborate with Hollywood’s most desirable female stars of a whole era - his leading ladies included Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. Having retired from the screen in 1966, Grant received a special Academy Award in 1970 in recognition of his extraordinary career. In his final years, he toured the country, giving informal lectures about his career and answering questions from his many fans. On the eve of one such appearance, on November 29, 1986, he died in Davenport, Iowa.
Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, NJ. She studied acting at Bowling Green University, and later worked both on radio and TV. For her very first film role, that of Marlon Brando’s sensitive girlfriend in On The Waterfront (1954), she won an “Oscar” for Best Supporting Actress. She was extremely effective as the wife of a drug addict in A Hatful Of Rain (1957). Her deliciously romantic performance in North By Northwest was followed by a part opposite Paul Newman in Exodus (1960), but few of her subsequent vehicles have been worthy of her talent. Eva Marie Saint is known to a younger generation as the mother of Cybill Shepherd’s Maddie Hays character on the Moonlighting TV show, and she has also appeared in a number of undistinguished made-for-TV movies.
The Director
Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in London (England). The “Master of Suspense” lived to see his name become synonymous with stylish, sophisticated suspense, laced with humor and romance. Educated by Jesuits, the young Hitchcock developed a flair for all things mechanical and began to work in films by 1920, starting out as a title card designer for silent motion pictures. In 1925, he directed the first of his 53 feature films. Early British classics such as The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) showed his most common motif: Ordinary people, with whom audiences can easily identify, all of a sudden are placed in life-or-death situations, being chased by the authorities as well as by the villains. In 1939, Hitchcock succumbed to the lure of Hollywood; his first film there was Rebecca (1940), which won the Best Picture “Oscar” and cemented his standing. He continued to masterly manipulate audiences’ emotions in such classics as
Notorious (1946) with Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant
Dial M For Murder (1954) with Grace Kelly, Ray Milland
Rear Window (1954) with Grace Kelly, James Stewart
To Catch A Thief (1955) with Grace Kelly, Cary Grant
Vertigo (1958) with James Stewart, Kim Novak
North By Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint
Psycho (1960) with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh
The Birds (1963) with Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren
In most of his films, Hitchcock made a somewhat ritual cameo appearance, his portly frame making him instantly recognizable. He brought out the best in his stars (including James Stewart, Cary Grant and the ultimate “Hitchcock blonde”, Grace Kelly), and inspired composer Bernard Herrmann to do some absolutely amazing and much-imitated scores (Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho). Between 1955 and 1965, he even increased his own celebrity through the popular television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which he introduced and sometimes directed. He received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1979. A year later, on April 29, 1980, he died in Bel Air, CA.
Quotes
(manually transcribed from video)
(Roger and his mother looking for “George Kaplan” at the Plaza Hotel)
Roger: Mother, do me a favor, will you? Put on that sweet, innocent look that you do so well, go to the desk and get the key for 796.
Mother: Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t do such a thing.
Roger: Ten dollars!
Mother: Not for all the money in the world.
Roger: Fifty!
Mother: Roger, you are disgraceful.
(She takes the money and gets the key. - A little later, on the 7th floor)
Mother: Car theft, drunk driving, assaulting an officer, lying to a judge, and now - housebreaking!
Roger: It’s not housebreaking. I’m hotelbreaking. There’s a difference.
Mother: … of five to ten years!
Man at Prairie Crossing: That’s funny. That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.
(During an auction in Chicago)
Roger: I didn’t realize you were an art collector. I thought you just collected corpses.
Vandamm (bidding): Five hundred.
Roger (looking at Eve): I bet you payed plenty for this little piece of sculpture.
Vandamm (bidding): Seven hundred.
Roger: She’s worth every dollar of it, take it from me. She puts her heart into her work. In fact, her whole body.
Auctioner: Sold to Mister Vandamm for seven hundred.
Roger: Oh - Mister Vandamm …
Vandamm: Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he has been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit, and now you play the peevish lover, stung by jealousy and betrayal. Seems to me you folks could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the actors’ studio.
Roger: Apparently the only performance that’ll satisfy you is when I play dead.
Vandamm: Your very next role. You’ll be quite convincing, I assure you.
Roger: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
Eve: What makes you think you have to conceal it?
Roger: She might find the idea objectionable.
Eve: Then again, she might not.
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