North by Northwest | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

When screenwriter Ernest Lehman was assigned to work for Alfred Hitchcock, he told the famed "master of suspense": "I'd like to write the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." The result, released in 1959, was North by Northwest, and although—fortunately—it did not end all Hitchcock pictures, it did seem to offer a summation of the best of the director's work up to that time. Starring Cary Grant in a fast-paced thriller of mistaken identity and cold war intrigue, North by Northwest had it all: glamour, mystery, wit, hairbreadth escapes, macabre humor, romance, and a breakneck cross-country chase culminating in a literally cliff-hanging climax atop the Mount Rushmore monument. Also, it was in this film that Hitchcock inserted one of his most famous set-pieces: Grant, alone near a seemingly deserted cornfield, suddenly being stalked and strafed by a crop-dusting airplane. A big hit movie, North by Northwest remains important as the pinnacle of the romantic-spy-chase genre Hitchcock himself had virtually originated—and was a turning point for the famed film-maker.

The precursors for North by Northwest were the romantic espionage thrillers with which the British director had first gained fame in the 1930s, such as The Lady Vanishes, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and, especially, The Thirty-Nine Steps. In this last film, the leading man (Robert Donat) is mistakenly accused of murder, causing him to flee both the police and the spies who are the true killers. The chase carries the hero all over Scotland, handcuffed to blonde Madeleine Carroll, with whom he is forced to have a relationship characterized by equal parts distrust and sexual attraction. All of this is played out and filmed in a style of high comedy, which actually serves to emphasize the excitement and suspense—the "Hitchcock touch." Once Hitchcock had established himself in Hollywood in the late 1930s, he wasted no time in extending this genre he had created, directing such successful pictures as Foreign Correspondent (with Joel McCrea) and Saboteur (with Robert Cummings). Both became regarded as classic Hitchcock thrillers, but at the time the director was disappointed that his reputation was not big enough to secure the services of the most important stars; (he had wanted Gary Cooper for Correspondent). By the 1950s, this was no longer a problem for Hitchcock. As one of the top directors in town, he could employ such first-rank actors as James Stewart and Cary Grant—and he preferred such casting because he felt the audience could most readily identify with a big star and empathize with him during the scenes where he's placed in jeopardy. With North by Northwest, Hitchcock's only film at MGM, he once more had the services of Cary Grant—and also the opportunity to improve upon his best work. As Hitchcock later explained to François Truffaut, audiences were terrified by the climax of Saboteur, in which hero Robert Cummings tries to save a spy who is dangling from the Statue of Liberty—but they would have been twice as frightened if it had been the hero, not the spy, who was hanging on for dear life. With his new film, Hitchcock made sure that Cary Grant and his leading lady (Eva Marie Saint) were both hanging by Grant's manicured fingernails atop the Mount Rushmore monument.

The story-line with which Lehman and Hitchcock manipulated their stars into this precarious position was an improbable cross-country labyrinth of spy vs. spy and love vs. betrayal, all spinning out from the fateful moment when jaded Madison Avenue executive Roger Thornhill (Grant) is mistaken for a mysterious Mr. Kaplan by the henchmen of spymaster Phillip Vandamm (James Mason, at his slyly sinister best). The spies kidnap Thornhill, interrogate him for secrets (which, of course, he does not possess), and attempt to kill him. Though Thornhill manages to survive this ordeal, his troubles are only beginning. Unable to convince the authorities—or even his own mother—that he was attacked, Thornhill investigates the mystery, only to find himself mistakenly accused of murdering an ambassador at the United Nations. Now, in the tradition of Thirty-Nine Steps, with the spies and the police after him, Thornhill flees west by train, befriended—or is he?—en route by beautiful blonde Eve Kendall (Saint), who hides him in her state room. Thornhill's perils continue to pile up as he makes his way across the country in search of the real Mr. Kaplan. What the audience learns before Thornhill does is that there is no real Mr. Kaplan—he's an imaginary agent created as a decoy by real U.S. agents.

If all of this begins to sound confusing or far-fetched, that is part of the point. If ever a director made a film with a twinkle in his eye, Hitchcock is that director and North by Northwest is that film. (He claimed that he'd intended to call the picture The Man in Lincoln's Nose, and include a scene of Cary Grant in the giant nostril having a sneezing fit. The actual title is inconsequentially a reference to Hamlet's madness.) Hitchcock always claimed that logic was a quality which a film-maker should be willing to sacrifice if it would allow for a great scene or a great shot, and North by Northwest is filled with such scenes and shots. (In truth, the plotting of the picture, improbable though it may be, is worked out ingeniously.) Hitchcock also claimed that, in a thriller, the revelation of the secret being sought—"the MacGuffin," as he called it—was totally irrelevant to the story; for Hitchcock, the fun was all in the chase. Consequently, he took delight in the airport sequence where government operative Leo G. Carroll finally explains the mystery to Cary Grant—and his words are drowned off the soundtrack by airplane engines.

For his original screenplay, Ernest (The Sweet Smell of Success) Lehman was nominated for an Academy Award (as were the film's editor and art directors). Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock's favoritecomposer in the 1950s, concocted an exciting musical score. The main title was in the form of a fandango—symbolizing, according to Herrmann, "the crazy dance about to take place between Cary Grant and the world." For the film's most famous scene, the attack of the crop-dusting airplane, Herrmann wisely refrained from providing any music, realizing that it would only distract from the sonic impact of the ever-approaching plane and the firing of its machine gun. Ironically, the following year, Hitchcock would request that Herrmann leave the shower-murder in Psycho similarly unscored. Herrmann, of course, disregarded this instruction, and when Hitchcock saw the scene with Herrmann's now-famous attacking violins on the soundtrack, the director apologized for having made "an improper suggestion."

Cary Grant contributed one of his most expert performances as the unlikely Thornhill, suavely romancing Eva Marie Saint's Eve while a world of spies is pursuing him. North by Northwest proved a triumph for both its star and its director, a cinematic high-water mark which remains much admired, and much imitated in films, including Charade, Silver Streak, etc. The second James Bond feature, From Russia With Love, boasts an exciting helicopter sequence not unlike Hitchcock's crop-dusting scene. From that point on, however, the Bond films would start going their own way, creating the genre of outrageously gimmick-stuffed espionage thrillers. After his horror-film one-two punch of Psycho and The Birds, Hitchcock would make films like Marnie and Topaz, which harked back to his erotic espionage thrillers of the 1940s, such as Notorious. But never again did he attempt another flat-out, action/chase thriller in the manner of his 1930s hits.

Lehman, Ernest. North by Northwest (screenplay), New York, Viking Press, 1972.

Rubin, Steven Jay. The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia, 1990.

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