Ernest Lehman

North by Northwest

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1959)

“I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself ‘slightly’ killed.”

—Roger Thornhill

 

“That’s funny. That plane’s dusting crops where there ain’t no crops.”

—Man at the Prairie Crossing

I expected Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest to be suspenseful, cinematic, and even a bit perverse, peppered with the director’s inimitable wit and dark sense of humor. It certainly is all that. However, I didn’t expect it to be altogether facetious, or as fun as it is. Scene after scene, North by Northwest delivers; not many films give as much bang for your buck as this one.

Cary Grant is Manhattan ad executive Roger O. Thornhill—”The ‘O’ stands for nothing,” he quips at one point. A mild-mannered, stylish middle-aged man in a grey flannel Brooks Brothers suit—think Mad Men—he leads a perfectly predictable straight life serving clients, drinking martinis, and keeping his WASPy mother (Jessie Royce Landis) entertained.

While having cocktails at the Plaza Hotel one afternoon, Thornhill is yanked into a treacherous game of cat-and-mouse when the goons of a smooth and well-spoken spy, baritone Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), mistake him for a government agent named George Kaplan. It’s nothing but trouble from here.

Relentlessly hunted after being framed for an incident at the United Nations, Thornhill flees Manhattan on a passenger train that looks a lot like Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited. He meets cool, mysterious, and sultry stranger Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who’s headed to Chicago. Her innuendo is sexy, but she’s not exactly trustworthy—Thornhill senses it, and so do we.

North by Northwest is ultimate Hitchcock, fueled by mistaken identity and packed with psychological drama manifest mostly in the form of dizzying pursuit: a drunken car chase on a windy road, a moving train, an out-of-nowhere crop duster in an Indiana cornfield, a race down Mount Rushmore. Nothing about the plot is believable; it’s more preposterous than a James Bond film. Although it shares the same Cold War sensibility, North by Northwest is much more intriguing and memorable. It’s also more entertaining.

Ernest Lehman’s script is brilliantly put together, but the story isn’t what makes this soar; it’s Hitchcock’s directing and the acting, particularly that of Grant, Saint, and Mason. Grant is a hoot to watch here; he plays Thornhill like a high-style Thurston Howell without his Lovie. He walks a fine line between convincing and cartoonish, always coming off as the former. It’s quite an astounding feat of balance, actually. Saint is the perfect counterpart to Grant. I could listen to Mason talk endlessly. Martin Landau plays a secondary character, but he’s awesome as über creepy (and probably closeted) Leonard, Vandamm’s right hand man.

Ahead of its time in many ways, North by Northwest is consciously silly yet pushes a few boundaries. Exceedingly mischievous, it just might be Hitchcock’s most charming film. It’s definitely more fun than any other film of his that I’ve seen—not that I’ve come close to seeing all of them. It’s truly a dazzler.

Personal geek-out side note: in a film full of thrilling moments, the most thrilling for me was the scene outside The Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. I live two doors down from the hotel, now known as Public. I’ve stood in the exact spot Grant did as he exited the alley to cross Goethe to get to the hotel—I walk my dog there all the time. It’s amusingly weird to see a place you know so well onscreen, let alone in something from almost 60 years ago. It’s different, but not much. Here’s what it looked like when North by Northwest was filmed:

IMG_9083.PNG

And here’s what it looks like today:

Ambassador.jpg

In 1995, the United States Library of Congress deemed North by Northwest “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

With Leo G. Carroll, Philip Ober, Josephine Hutchinson, Adam Williams, Robert Ellenstein, Edward Platt, Philip Coolidge, Edward Binns

Production: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/MGM

Distribution: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/MGM

136 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) A

Fathom Events

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1966)

Elizabeth Taylor. Richard Burton. Edward Albee. Even George Segal, who was kind of a fixture on NBC during the ’80s and ’90s. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will.

Director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman stick pretty close to Albee’s 1962 play with their film adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and it’s hard to watch. Really hard. To be fair, though, it’s supposed to be, and that’s what makes it so good.

The promotional poster promises an evening of fun and games, but very little joy is to be found here, at least on the surface: all that marital baiting, sniping, and yelling is miserable. Fuck! It took me five or six false starts over a few years before I finally got into the film—and only with the help of a bottle of bourbon. Once I was in, though, I was hooked: watching this disastrous night unfold and all four characters unravel engrossed me desite the buzz I had going.

The oddly but appropriately named George (Burton), a history professor at a small East Coast university, and Martha (Taylor), the daughter of the school’s president, stumble home drunk from a faculty party, neither one listening to the other as they babble about nothing. Martha quotes Bette Davis, which ultimately reveals more about her viewpoint than any other comment she makes—and the woman can talk.

They babble and respond to each other half-heartedly. Martha tells George that she invited a young couple, a professor from another department and his wife, over for a drink. George is miffed, but there’s no time to react.

Enter Nick (Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis), a polite, young, good-looking couple that, as we learn, has their own set of problems. Martha and George pour drinks and pick at each other while Nick and Honey watch, uncomfortable at first, thinking maybe they shouldn’t be there. As the drinking continues, though, they’re pulled into the…drama? Turns out, they have more in common with each other than they think.

Here’s the thing about George and Martha: their marriage is dysfunctional, but they seem to operate well inside the confines of their explosive relationship—Martha brays and George stays, responding in a passive aggressive manner as he fixes them both another drink. Over and over and over again. Do they have any limits? It’s hard to say, partly because it’s never clear that we should take anything at face value: what we see is not necessarily what it is. That’s the genius of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. 

In 2013, the United States Library of Congress deemed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

With Frank Flanagan, Agnes Flanagan

Production: Warner Brothers

Distribution: Warner Brothers

131 minutes
Not rated

(DVD purchase) A