ryan stumacher
In the Understanding Hitchcock J-Term class, we had “film journal” writing assignments for each movie we watched that included some of our informal analytical and critical thoughts on the film. This is one of the film journals I wrote. Spoilers for North By Northwest.
North by Northwest feels intentionally hollow, almost like a sized-up parody of a Hitchcock movie. The movie builds layers of artifice both with its aesthetic and content. Cary Grant plays an advertising agent who responds to all the life-threatening events of the film with charming wit and sarcasm. His theatrical performance removes a true sense of danger from the story. On top of that, it is also revealed relatively early in the film that George Kaplan—the man that Vandamm believes Thornhill to be—doesn’t even exist, emptying the central cat-and-mouse chase of meaning. Roger Thornhill becomes the film’s macguffin. Similarly to the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading, the conflict of the movie becomes nothing more than a trivial story in the larger schemes of the federal government.
I found the movie to mostly work as an exhibition of scale and excess. It contains twists on top of twists on top of twists as well as extravagant set pieces, including an out-of-control car chase, a murderous crop duster, and a fatal game of hide-and-seek atop Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock also seems to have a keen attention to architecture in this movie. He presents us with these breathtaking wide shots of the UN building and Vandamm’s house in Rapid City, all captured in large-format Vistavision.