North by Northwest (1959)

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Ernest Lehman
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Mary Saint,
James Mason, Martin Landau,
Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G Carroll

“I’ve always wanted to do a chase sequence across the faces of Mount Rushmore,” said Alfred Hitchcock in 1957. That, and his (and screen writer Ernest Lehman’s) aversion to developing the story they had actually committed to (The Wreck of Mary Deare), resulted in the brilliant fluke known to the world as North by Northwest.  

A Hitchcock scholar once categorised the film as “a comic thriller about mistaken identity, political depravity, sexual blackmail and ubiquitous role-playing.” In a later interview with director Peter Bogdanovich in 1963, Hitchcock explained that the film was a fantasy. “The whole film is epitomised in the title,” he noted. “There’s no such thing as north-by-northwest on the compass.” 

Maybe so, but today, on Cary Grant's – one of my favourite actors – 121st birthday, a look at one of his iconic films, a collaboration with a man who once declared that "Knowing Cary is the greatest association I've had  with any film actor. Cary is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life."

Shalini and I, having decided that we had shamefully neglected Cary Grant, were desperately searching for North by Northwest on all the streaming platforms we were subscribed to, with little success. Finally, Shalini ran down a source and we settled down to watch a very well-restored print of the film that melded espionage, romance, humour and suspense into a wholesome mix of tension and entertainment.

 

When we first meet advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), he is leaving his Manhattan office to go to a business dinner at New York’s famed Plaza Hotel. He’s charming, witty and of course, busy – dictating notes to his efficient secretary, changing suits in the taxi (that he commandeers from another), and making small talk to the clients while asking the waiter to send a wire to his mother whom he’s to meet for dinner later that evening. He couldn’t have foreseen just how much this last action will upend his life.
 
For, raising his hand to call the waiter just as the bellboy is paging a ‘George Kaplan’, Roger sets in motion a cat-and-mouse game with both dangerous goons and the police on his trail.
Shalini: I love how quickly we dive into the action.
Me: Hitch didn’t believe in waiting.

As he walks to the lobby to send the telegraph, Roger is frogmarched across the lobby by two men accost him and quickly bundle him into a waiting car at gunpoint. Initially, Roger is sure it’s a prank, but the two men are the strong, silent type and are more prone to let their guns do the talking. He is taken to a luxurious estate in Long Island, with a nameplate saying ‘Townsend’. There, he’s unceremoniously pushed into the library, where a rather suave gentleman name Lester Townsend (James Mason) seems quite surprised at seeing Roger. "Not what I expected. A little taller. A little more polished than the others." But he still refuses to believe Roger when he reiterates that he has no idea who George Kaplan may be. For he has ‘Kaplan’s’ itinerary pat: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit… and now, he’s registered at the Plaza Hotel, New York, staying in Room#796. 

Even Roger showing him his driver’s licence and other forms of identification doesn’t shake Townsend’s belief that he is indeed Kaplan.
Me: It’s awful when people don’t believe you’re who you say you are.
Shalini: Yes, and Grant does the ‘growing frustration’ bit very nicely.
The upshot is that Roger is offered a drink – a great deal of it. And then, carefully placed behind the wheel of a convertible. Obviously, the plan is to stage an accidental death. 

Me: I like that he’s drunk enough not to be able to steer straight. He was so good at physical comedy, wasn’t he? Poor Cary – he was never given enough credit for his performances.
Shalini: I agree. He’s a victim of “He makes what he does look so easy that you think it actually is easy!"
Me: And his obvious good looks didn’t help, either.

While we were extolling Mr Grant’s good looks and his acting ability, Roger is fortuitously getting pulled over by the cops for drunk driving. And for driving a stolen vehicle. Unfortunately for Roger, the cops don’t believe his story of being kidnapped, nor of international spies and attempted murder. He is thrown into the ‘drunk tank’ to sleep it off, and when permitted one phone call, phones his mother (a wryly deadpan Jessie Royce Landis) to bail him out. 

Shalini: The mother is a hoot, isn't she? 
Me: Yes, she's so comically droll that she can only be Roger's mother!The next morning, when he appears in front of a judge, and his lawyer explains the ‘extenuating circumstances’, the judge turns the case over to county detectives. Roger takes the whole cohort – police, detectives,  his mother – to Townsend’s estate. Unfortunately for Roger, there’s no evidence to prove his story; the library has been swept clean, the cabinet has books not bottles of liquor, and ‘Mrs Townsend’, who greets Roger as an old friend, chides him for having drunk too much the previous night. He does learn, however, that ‘Lester Townsend’ is addressing the UN General Assembly that afternoon. The detectives are now sure that Roger was making up stories to account for his drunk driving, and even his mother doesn’t believe Roger’s story. 
Me: Poor Cary!
Shalini: Well, that's only natural. We know our sons!

So, Roger drags his mother to Plaza Hotel, where he 'persuades' her into getting the key to Room 796...

...where he hopes to discover who the elusive Kaplan is, and why he’s being mistaken for the man.   There, they run into the chamber maid, who mistakes Roger for the room’s occupant. It turns out that she had never seen Kaplan before. Neither has the valet whom Roger calls to ask about Kaplan’s clothes. But when he picks up the phone in the room to answer a call, Roger unwittingly cements his identity as that of ‘George Kaplan’.
 
Another run-in with the thugs ensues in the elevator going down, and Roger, now adept at shaking them off, manages to do so yet again with an ingenious use of the other people in the lift. 

But he must find this George Kaplan to clear his name! 
 
Unfortunately, that search will lead him to the United Nations building where he will meet the real Lester Townsend, who is just as bewildered as Roger over the entire situation. He’s been living in his town apartment for the past month because the General Assembly is in session, and his wife has been dead for many years. Roger shows him a photograph of the ‘Townend’ he met. And then, just like that, the real Townsend’s murdered.

Shalini: CG! Never touch a murder weapon!
Me: Self-preservation 101, Cary!
And Roger is now a murder suspect. 

Meanwhile, in a dusty office somewhere, a group of people are discussing what’s happening to Roger. He’s innocent, says one of them. Another comments: “It’s so horribly sad. How is it I feel like laughing?” Well, what should they do about him? “Nothing,” says a senior officer. They cannot compromise their operation.  
Me: Damn, that’s cold! This is CG we are talking about!
Shalini: Yes! Do what you must to save him!

By this time, Roger has managed to reach Grand Central railway station, pursued by the police. From the Plaza Hotel, he’s learnt that Kaplan had checked out and is headed for Chicago, so that’s where, Roger tells his mother in a quick telephone call, he will go. 

On the train, Roger bumps into an icy blonde, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) who very agreeably helps to mislead the cops.
Shalini: Come on, wouldn’t you save that face too?
Me: I would. But I’ve snow-white motives. Her, I’m not too sure about.
Shalini: You do? I sure don’t. I want to lock him up in a room with me.
Me: Those are my snow-white motives.
After hiding in the toilet to escape the ticket collector, he bumps into Eve again when he’s seated at her table in the dining car.
A flirtation begins between them:
Roger: “What I mean is, 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."
Roger: "Think how lucky I am to have been seated here."
Eve: "Well, luck had nothing to do with it."
Roger: "Fate?"
Eve: "I tipped the steward $5 dollars to seat you here if you should come in."
Me: Wouldn’t you?
Shalini: Sure would. This conversation… Wow!
Me: I love the verbal jousting. I also love the non-verbal communication – the way his expressions change, for instance, the little moue he makes…
Shalini: The innuendo is off the walls. I love it. It’s cheeky, but not cheap.
Me: I agree. It’s two consenting adults playing a game where each knows what the other's at.

While we were drooling, Eve is letting Roger know that she knows who she is and why he’s running from the cops. But don’t worry, she tells him, she won’t say a word. Roger: How come?
Eve: It’s a nice face.
Me: “It’s a nice face”? Nice? How milquetoast!  

Then, as Eve notices the train making an unscheduled stop and two policemen boarding the train, she and Roger quickly make their way to her compartment. There, Roger hides in the closed upper bunk while the cops question her about her lunch companion.
Shalini: She’s really good at lying, isn’t she? I would be wary if I were CG.
Me: She’s the classic Hitchcock femme fatale. Hitch was an awful person and it’s hard to like his films while disliking the man.
Shalini: Yes, he was, but I console myself with the rationalisation that a film is more than one person.
Meanwhile, Eve is offering her hotel room for Roger to stay in while she contacts Kaplan to set up a meeting. 

We love the way the scene is building up the tension. We also love the way CG looks, given that he’s not pretending to be younger than he is. As Shalini pointed out, if it needed pointing, he looks like he’s in his 50s; his face has wrinkles and deep lines. It’s just that he’s still a very fit, very good-looking 50-something.
 
When they reach Chicago, Roger makes his escape by pretending to be a Red-Cap porter, carrying Eve’s luggage. 

 

After being questioned by the police again, though she’s not a suspect, Eve offers to telephone Kaplan at the hotel while Roger changes back into his clothes. When Roger returns, Eve tells him that Kaplan has agreed to meet him at the Prairie bus stop, off Route 41, an hour and half ride away by bus.

At the barren road-crossing, surrounded by cornfields, Roger waits for the mysterious Mr Kaplan. Soon, in what is the film’s most famous scene, brilliantly shot, he will be – literally – on the run for his life.

North by Northwest is like catnip to our entertainment-loving selves. Pure escapist entertainment with the emphasis on ‘escapist’. The action takes us across New York, Chicago, Indiana and South Dakota as Roger makes a mad dash, first to evade the police and a murder charge, and second, to discover who Kaplan really was and why the bad guys want him.
 
Roger will realise Eve (so aptly named) is treacherous, that ‘Townsend’ is really a wealthy industrialist, Philip Vandamm (James Mason), who may be exporting more than antiques, and that governments engage in ‘expedient exaggerations’ just as much as advertising executives do. Moreover, they do not always care about collateral damage.

 

 But, before he can clear his name, he will have been chased by men in cars, motorbikes and a crop-duster plane; he will run through cornfields (ruining his suit) and slide down the rock face of Mount Rushmore, and be shot at by a beautiful woman. 

North by Northwest involves one mistaken identity, one assumed identity, a double agent, fantastic situations like a kidnapping from a hotel lobby, a murder in a UN building, and a climactic chase across the faces of the various US Presidents on Mount Rushmore. It was a fantastical ride, and Cary Grant is said to have complained that they were one-third of the way into filming and he still couldn’t make any sense of the plot.   

However, North by Northwest, despite Hitchcock’s choice of absurd titles like Breathless and The Man on Lincoln’s Nose, is tightly plotted with a veritable slew of ‘MacGuffins’ – plot devices to keep the narrative in motion, sprinkled liberally and deliberately by the Master of Suspense. He taps into the most primeval of our fears –what if no one believes who we say we are? What if our known world is suddenly turned topsy-turvy? If our pleasantly-routine world is suddenly upended and we are being chased by who-knows-what without nary a place to hide?
 
The movie had several great lines, and Grant’s droll delivery makes them sound even better. He really was so good at delivering those throwaway lines in the most deadpan manner. For instance, when he finally learns the truth about Kaplan from the Feds, he refuses point blank to continue to be the decoy:
Roger: “I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me. And I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”

Or later, when the ticket seller at the railway station asks him what's wrong with his eyes, Roger says, "They're sensitive to questions." 

Later, when they are fleeing for their lives, and they are dangling dangerously between the sculptures, Roger proposes that, if they ever get out of the situation alive, they go back to New York together. Is that a proposition, Eve wonders. Rogers tells her it’s a proposal.
Eve: “What happened to the first two marriages?”
Roger: “My wives divorced me.”
Eve: “Why?”
Roger: “Well, I think they said I led too dull a life.”
We have already drooled over his handsomeness [Shalini fainted away at the sight of a shirtless CG], and wondered why our spouses don’t look half as good. Though that’s unfair to them. How many men look like Grant, and so effortlessly at that?
 

In one scene in the film, when Roger is escaping from his hospital room, he steps into an adjoining one through the window ledge. “Stop!” she exclaims, before putting on her glasses. Then, she says, “Stop!” again, this time, in a very inviting manner.

Both Shalini and I agreed that she spoke for all women! We also hypothesized about how Grant would have made an awesome James Bond, much as we both like Sean Connery.  

 

Eva Marie Saint hands in a very controlled performance, and is pitch-perfect as the beautiful, seemingly treacherous double agent. She's by turns, flirtatious and calculating, vulnerable and confident, sweet and sexy. She plays her undercover agent with just the right touch of ambiguity that leaves you guessing as to her motives. 

 

Eve's conversation with Roger is one of the risquést scenes ever filmed during the days of the Code. In fact, one of her dialogues had to be dubbed over to satisfy the censors: "I never make love on an empty stomach" was changed to "I never discuss love on an empty stomach" at their behest. The chemistry between Grant and her is charged with electricity; one can almost feel the sparks. 

So does James Mason, who made a chilling, yet nuanced villain. He's suave, sophisticated and soft-spoken. Watch him in the scene where he discovers Eve's perfidy.

 

 

Martin Landau plays Leonard, equally chilling as his master; there's a tinge of the homosexual in his behaviour, and it explains his jealousy of Eve, who's his boss's mistress. 

It is underlined in one exchange between Vandamm and him: 
Leonard: "Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms."
Vandamm: "The truth? I've heard nothing but innuendos."
Leonard: "Call it my woman's intuition, if you will."

 

 

This was Landau's first major role (after a small appearance in Pork Chop Hill). 

The basic idea of an innocent man mistaken for an international spy who an unnamed government agency had invented as cover for the real spy had been pitched to Hitchcock many years earlier. The ‘innocent man on the run to prove his innocence’ had already been effectively used by Hitchcock in earlier films like The 39 Steps, Spellbound and Saboteur. The trope of the ‘wrong man’ had also been used effectively in The Wrong Man and even in   Strangers on a Train (where the police are chasing ‘the wrong man’). Throw in Lehman’s penchant for absurdity, longtime collaborator Bernad Herrmann’s effective musical score Saul Bass’s engaging title sequence, and Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Landau, Leo G Carroll, etc., into the mix and what we have is an edge-of-the-seat thriller which doesn’t take itself too seriously. 

Trivia: When Roger pulls out his match book to light Eve's cigarette, she notices his monogram, 'R.O.T' and asks him what the 'O' stands for. "Nothing," replies Thornhill. This was Hitchcock's sly dig at David O Selznick, whose middle initial did not stand for anything at all. I suppose it was also quite tongue-in-cheek, since Roger's initials spell 'rot'.

Journalist Otto L Guernsey Jr. suggested the plot of an innocent man being suspected of being a secret agent who doesn't exist to Hitchcock based on a real-life incident he had witnessed during war time. Operation Mincemeat, planned by British intelligence, chose a cadaver and gave it an identity and false papers referring to the invasion of Sardinia and Greece, to draw Italian and German forces away from the planned invasion site. The Man Who Never Was (1956) was based on this covert operation.