Like thousands of people across the nation, I had a heated argument with my family over Thanksgiving. We did not argue over politics, or about the incoming occupant of the White House, or any other culture-war topic you might think of. We fought over something much more important: pop culture. My nephew, Peyton, declared that all movies and music made before 1994 are garbage. All art made before that time looks bad, sounds bad, is just plain bad. When compared to anything modern, the old stuff can’t compete. He did admit a lot of modern art is also bad. And I got him to recognize that some old stuff – like the ever-loving Beatles – were culturally important and influential, but I could not sway him that any of it was good. I’ve had similar arguments with my brother over movies. He hates classic cinema. He says the look of them is off and the acting stilted.
Buy North By Northwest 4K UHDI thought about this while watching this new 4K UHD transfer of North by Northwest, especially during an early scene in which Cary Grant’s character Roger Thornhill is plastered with alcohol and forced to drive down a curvy hill. That scene was obviously shot with rear projection even while watching on my old, fuzzy VHS tape. With this new transfer, it stands out even more. On this viewing, I noticed many more examples of where the artifice of filmmaking was clearly present. Towards the end of the film, there is a scene in which Roger Thornhill is speaking to an intelligence agent at an airport which again is clearly shot on a stage using rear projection. The final act takes place around a huge house complete with an airstrip that is supposedly directly behind Mt. Rushmore – a massively famous National Park that has none of those things behind it. Hell, this is a film in which Cary Grant, one of the most charming, suave, and handsome men to have ever existed, plays a dull bachelor who lives with his mother. If that’s not make-believe, then I don’t know what is.
Alfred Hitchcock is obviously showing us, in big bold letters, the artificial nature of movies. We aren’t supposed to think what is happening on the screen is even for one second real. But the thing is, in my dozen or so viewings of this film, I’ve never – not once – remotely even cared. North by Northwest is one of the most relentlessly entertaining films ever made. It is a perfect movie despite, or even because of how artificial it is.
It is a film that never stops being fun. We are introduced to Thornhill as a busy advertising executive. We see him take his secretary out of the office, and ride with her inside a cab while he gives her instructions. When they arrive at his club, he sends her back to the office. He meets a few coworkers and then remembers he needs to make a phone call. He signals to a waiter at the very moment the waiter is paging a George Kaplan. The two thugs that asked for that page mistake Thornhill for Kaplan and we’re off to the races. That five-minute introduction is all we get before the movie takes off and really never stops. Oh, it isn’t non-stop action; the film smartly allows us several scenes to breathe throughout. But even those slower moments, whether it is a scene of exposition or romance, or barbing with our villains, are immensely entertaining.
Those thugs take Thornhill to a country estate where he is questioned by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) pretending to be a man named Lester Townsend. It is here they ply Thornhill with alcohol and send him down that curvy road. Surviving that ordeal, he’s picked up by the police who take him back to that country estate the next morning. They are met by a woman who claims to be Mrs. Townsend but says that Mr. Townsend was not there the previous evening because he was in New York preparing to address the General Assembly at the United Nations. This leads our hero to the UN where the real Townsend is stabbed to death. Grabbing hold of the knife as Townsend falls, it appears as if Thornhill was the killer. He then sneaks onto a train to Chicago where he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), a woman all-too-willing to help a man now accused of murder. They look for the real Kaplan in a hotel room and then a desolate cornfield (where Thornhill is nearly killed in a famous scene by a crop duster). All of which leads them to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore. There is loads I’m leaving out, but you get the picture if you haven’t seen the movie (and my Gawd, you should really see this movie).
The script is terribly clever. The dialogue with Eve Kendall is full of flirtatious innuendo and with Vandamm it is artfully droll. Hitchcock is at the height of his powers, pulling off incredible set pieces and delicious dialogue sequences like the master craftsman he was.
There is not a single dull moment. I’ve seen this film at least half a dozen times and I’ve never been bored even when I know exactly what is going to happen. I think I might show my nephew Peyton this movie and convince him once and for all that older movies can be fantastic. I suspect he’ll believe me after that.
Warner Brothers presents North by Northwest with a new transfer sourced from a brand-new restoration. It looks absolutely glorious. I have a Blu-ray copy of the film that was released several years back and have watched it many times. I always thought that it looked great, but this looks spectacular. Extras mostly are ported in from previous releases (almost all of them come from the 50th Anniversary disc released a little while ago) but there is a brand new 23-minute feature that delves inside the cinematography, art, and score of the film. All of the extras are as follows:
- Audio commentary with screenwriter Ernest Lehman
- North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit (23:06)
- Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest (39:27)
- The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style (57:32)
- North by Northwest: One for the Ages (25:29)
- A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock (3:16)
North by Northwest is one of my all-time favorite films and this new release with an all-new transfer would be a glorious addition to any film fan’s collection.