North by Northwest: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''The Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures.''|'''Ernest Lehman''', screenwriter}}

 

When this goes wrong, Roger and Eve end up being chased across [[Monumental Battle|Mount Rushmore]] by Leonard and Vandamm's other henchmen.

 

* [[Action Survivor]]: Roger.

* [[Affably Evil]]: Vandamm.

* [[Big Applesauce]]

* [[Blatant Lies]]: Thornhill's explanation for why the cops are combing the 20th Century Limited for him.

* [[Bond Villain Stupidity]]

* [[Broken Heel]]: The heel of Eve's left shoe breaks while she and Thornhill hang on Mount Rushmore. Not surprisingly, she then ditches her shoes.

** The California coastline stands in for that of Glen Cove, New York, where Thornhill was originally to meet his fate. The north shore of Long Island is rocky, but not THAT rocky.

* [[The Chase]]

* [[Cold War]]

* [[Cool Car]]: That Mercedes convertible they try to kill Thornhill in.

* [[Cool House]]: Vandamm's Frank Lloyd Wright-style abode in South Dakota.

* [[Daylight Horror]]: The crop-duster attack.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Roger.

* [[Depraved Homosexual]]: Leonard is [[Ambiguously Gay|implied]] to be one.

* [[Disney Villain Death]]: Valerian and Leonard (although it's arguable Leonard was already dead from the gunshot).

* [[Evil Minions]]

* [[Exposition Cut]]: When Roger is brought up to speed, we do not hear the exposition since we already know this stuff.

* [[Femme Fatale]]: Eve Kendall.

* [[Funny Background Event]]: During the scene where Eve pretends to shoot Thornhill, you can clearly see a kid in the background plug his ears in anticipation. Eva Marie Saint notes in the making of special that there were other good takes, and she has no idea why that one was used.

* [[Gambit Pileup]]: Vandamm, the Professor, Thornhill and Eve have their own elaborate plans, which clash constantly.

* [[Hammer and Sickle Removed For Your Protection]]

* [[He Knows Too Much]]

* [[Idiot Ball]]: Not once, but ''twice'' the villains choose an overly elaborate method to try and kill Thornhill, from which he is easily able to escape: first by getting him drunk and putting him behind the wheel of a car so that he'll drive into the ocean and it'll look like an accident, second by running him over with a crop-duster in the film's most iconic scene. Hitchcock did acknowledge that the crop-duster scene is needlessly complex, but pointed out that no one thinks that [[Fridge Logic|while they're actually in the cinema]].

* [[Indy Ploy]]: Thornhill quickly becomes adept at making escape plans on the fly.

* [[It Was Here, I Swear]]

* [[Knife Nut]]: Valerian.

* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: From ''[[Hamlet]]'':

* [[Momma's Boy]]: Thornhill, at least to the extent that it's Mother who he calls to bail him out of jail and assist him in casing "Kaplan"'s room at the Plaza.

* [[Monumental Battle]]

* [[Overly Narrow Superlative]]: "You're the smartest woman I've ever spent the night with on a train."

* [[Playing Gertrude]]: Jessie Royce Landis, who plays Thornhill's mother, was only seven years older than Cary Grant in real life.

* [[Product Placement]]: Northwest Airlines has a sign at Midway Airport.

** Which makes for a very subtle, nonverbal [[Title Drop]]: Thornhill and the Professor fly ''north by Northwest'' from Chicago to Rapid City.

** In the same scene Vandamm tells Roger that with all the roles he's been playing, he could "use a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actor's Studio." Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau both studied there.

* [[Sissy Villain]]: Leonard refers to his suspicion of who the double-agent is as his "woman's intuition" and Vandamm comments that he thinks Leonard is jealous of his relationship with Eve.

* [[Take My Hand]]

* [[Traitor Shot]]: Provides the page image.

* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: Thornhill, up to a certain moment, is this to both the Professor's and Vandamm's [[Plan|plans]].

* [[Visual Innuendo]]: Train and tunnel version.

* [[The Windy City]]

* [[Wrongly Accused]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:National Film Registry]]

[[Category:Films of the 1950s]]