Week 11
Lecture: Reading Hitchcock’s North
by North West and the Birds
Screening/Readings
Screening: North by Northwest (1959); and
clips The Birds (1963)
Reading: Cohen; Volume 2 Part IV. The
Black Sun 9. Upping the Ante: A Deauratic
Cinema (pp 191- 196)
Recommended Readings
Recommended Readings: Sloan, J., Hitchcock:
The Definitive Bibliography (pp. 295-300) and (pp
305- 311)
Raymond Bellour "Symbolic Blockage" (on North
by Northwest) (reader)
Jameson, F "Spatial Systems in North by
Northwest" (Reader)
Assignment #3 Library research essay (due
30%)
Take Home examination handout
1950’s
Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train,
I Confess, Dial M for Murder, Rear
Window, To Catch a Thief , The Trouble
with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too
Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by
Northwest.
Origins: Ernest Lehman
The screenplay was written by Ernest
Lehman, who purportedly wanted to write
“the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock
pictures.” John Russell Taylor's official
biography of Hitchcock, Hitch (1978),
suggests that the story originated after a
spell of writer's block during the scripting of
another movie project.
The title
The title, North by Northwest, is taken from a
line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Hitchcock
interview with Peter Bogdanovich 1963). The
play is also concerned with the difference
between reality and appearance-- an old
Platonic problem. “I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly / I know a
hawk from a handsaw.” (Hamlet Act II, Scene
ii). Hamlet thus hints to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, his friends, that his madness is
only an act to protect himself while he gathers
information on his father's murder.
N by NW ?
North by Northwest is a non-existent
coordinate that “refers in part to the
directionless, surrealistic search of the
befuddled hero/common man around the
country for a fictional character.”
Cast
Cary Grant... Roger O. Thornhill
Eva Marie Saint... Eve Kendall
James Mason... Phillip Vandamm
Jessie Royce Landis .Clara Thornhill
Leo G. Carroll..The Professor
Josephine Hutchinson...Mrs. Townsend
Philip Ober...Lester Townsend
Martin Landau...Leonard Adam Williams
Cary Grant
Archibald Alec Leach
Born: January 18 1904 Bristol, England, UK
Died: November 29, 1986 (aged 82), Davenport,
Iowa United States. Years active:1932–1966
Spouse(s):Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935);Barbara
Hutton (1942-1945);Betsy Drake (1949-1962)
Dyan Cannon (1965-1968); Barbara Harris (19811986)Partner(s)Maureen Donaldson (1973-1977.
Children:Jennifer Grant (b. 1966)
Grant and Hitch
Cary Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred
Hitchcock, notorious for disliking actors,
who said that Grant was “the only actor I
ever loved in my whole life” Nelson,
Nancy, and Cary Grant. Evenings With
Cary Grant: Recollections In His Own
Words and By Those Who Loved Him
Best. Thorndike, Maine: Thorndike Press.
1992. p.325.
Eva Marie Saint
American. Born: Newark, New Jersey, 4
July 1924. Education: Attended Delmar
High School, New Jersey; Bowling Green
State University, Ohio, B.A. 1946; Actors
Studio, New York. Family: Married the
director Jeffrey Hayden, 1951, son: Darrell,
daughter: Laurette.
Career:
Acted on radio in New York, including the serial
One Man's Family, and later in TV version, 1950–
52; 1953—role in the Broadway play The Trip to
Bountiful; 1954—film debut in On the Waterfront;
later worked on stage and television, sometimes
directed by Hayden; 1986—in TV mini-series A
Year in the Life; 1987–88—appeared in TV series
Moonlighting; 1990—in TV mini-series Voyage of
Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair and People Like
Us. Awards: Best Supporting Actress Academy
Award, for On the Waterfront, 1954; Emmy
Award, for People Like Us, 1990.
Cary Grant Films (Selected 1940-)
His Girl Friday (1940)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
The Howards of Virginia (1940)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Penny Serenade (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Cary Grant films cont.
Mr. Lucky (1943)
Destination Tokyo (1943)
Once Upon a Time (1944)
Road to Victory (1944) (short subject)
None But the Lonely Heart(1944)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Notorious (1946)
North by Northwest (1959)
Eva Marie Saint Films
1954 On the Waterfront (Kazan) (as Edie Doyle)
1956 That Certain Feeling (Panama and Frank) (as
Dunreath Henry)
1957 A Hatful of Rain (Zinnemann) (as Celia Pope);
Raintree Country (Dmytryk) (as Nell Gaither)
1959 North by Northwest (Hitchcock) (as Eve Kendall)
1960 Exodus (Preminger) (as Kitty Fremont)
1962 All Fall Down (Frankenheimer) (as Echo
O'Brien1964
36 Hours (Seaton) (as Anna Hedler); A Carol for
Another Christmas (Mankiewicz—for TV) (as Wave)
The Vandamm house
The set designers on North by Northwest were
Robert Boyle, William A. Horning, Merrill Pye,
Henry Grace, and Frank McKelvey. It has not
been possible to sort out exactly which of these
men was responsible for the house design, but
whoever did it did his homework. The final design
was of a hilltop house of limestone dressed and
laid in the manner made famous by Wright, along
with a concrete cantilever under the living room
area.
Key Locations
1. The United Nations Building (New York City) (a
hidden camera filmed the hero's entrance up the
steps into the building, but the UN lobby was a
recreation)
2. Grand Central Station (New York City)
3. Mount Rushmore (in South Dakota) (there are
shots of the exterior of the park's monument, but
the actors crawled next to a reproduction of the
Presidential faces)
Set Pieces
Exciting set-pieces include Thornhill’s
thrilling drunk driving scene, travelling
seduction scenes with steamy double
entendres during a cross-country train ride,
the seven-minute bi-plane crop-duster
attack scene near a Midwest cornfield, the
art auction scene, and the dangling
(hanging) finale at Mount Rushmore.
MacGuffin
The MacGuffin in this film (the device or
plot element that catches the viewer's
attention or drives the logic of the plot) is
the secret information sought by the spies
(contained in a figurine), and secondarily,
the mistaken identity at the beginning of the
film.
Themes
North by Northwest ,is considered to be a
masterpiece for its themes of deception, mistaken
identity, and moral relativism in the Cold War era.
The central theme is that of theater and playacting, wherein everyone is playing a part, no one
is who they seem, and identity is in flux. This is
reflected by Thornhill's line: “The only
performance that will satisfy you is when I play
dead.”
Award Nominations
Academy Award nominations, but no Oscars. This
film was nominated for three awards: Best Story
and Screenplay (Ernest Lehman), Best Color Art
Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing
(George Tomasini). [Some believe that the film's
premise was based on the famous 1956
international espionage case titled: "The Galindez
Affair."] The film also included a superb score by
Bernard Herrmann. However, there were no
nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, or
Best Score, to name only a few.
The Birds (1963)
The short story The Birds by Daphne du
Maurier. The film's innovative special
effects, soundtrack, and apocalyptic theme
influenced later “revenge of nature” disaster
and ecology films. Screenplay: Evan Hunter
Cast
Tippi Hedren… Melanie Daniels
Rod Taylor… Mitch Brenner
Jessica Tandy.. Lydia Mitch’s mother
Suzanne Pleshette…Annie Hayworth
Veronica Cartwright
Charles McGraw
Ethel Griffies
Audio track
Instead of a typical film soundtrack, Hitchcock
had Oskar Sala painstakingly create bird sounds
on his trautonium, which were then scored to the
movie by Bernard Herrmann. No natural bird
sounds were used. There is a very high-pitched
soundtrack of electronic noise through the film
which subconsciously adds to the tension
experienced by the viewer. Just prior to the attack
on the school children, as they run from the
historic school, they sing an unaccompanied song.
Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren
Bodega Bay
Origins
The Du Maurier story suggested a myriad
of cinematic possibilities that stirred
Hitchcock’s creative instincts. Financed by
the success of his television show, and
filmed with equipment borrowed from the
Revue Studio, “The Birds” became
Hitchcock’s first horror/fantasy film.
Locations
All of the inside scenes were recreated very
specifically from the original buildings and
shot within the studios. Only outside shots
were filmed on location. Many of the aerial
and far away shots were painted mattes
amplifying the size of the town.
Week 11
Lecture: Phantasmatic themes in
Hitchcock; the ‘undead.’
Screening: The Trouble with Harry (1954)
Reading Cohen, T. Volume 2 Part IV
Hitchcock’s Light touch (pp 197-256)
Recommended readings Sloan, J.,
Hitchcock: The Definitive Bibliography (pp
271-278)
Origins
Hitchcock paid $11,000 to acquire the
rights to British author John Trevor Story’s
novel The Trouble with Harry (1950), and
in 1954 asked John Michael Hayes to
produce the screenplay for this dark comedy
that was released in 1955.
Parable
Hitchcock wanted to do this film“just for
fun and relief from what he was doing
regularly” Spoto called it “a filmed parable
on the death and resurrection of Christ,
presented ironically.” Hitchcock himself always ironic - called it a “nice little
pastorale.”
Harry Worp
The Captain thinks he has inadvertently
shot Harry Worp; “Harmless potshot at a
rabbit and I’m a murderer.”
ars longa, vita brevis.
Over the course of several hours from early
morning to late evening the four characters bury
Harry and then disinter him four times. On one
level this film is about the abstractions we live in
daily life, time and space, the question of being,
and an example literally for Harry, of a
Heideggerian ‘being for death.’ A core theme for
Hitchcock in this film, as for Thomas de Quincey
and Oscar Wilde, is the mutability of life and
immutability of art - ars longa, vita brevis.
Phantasmatic/Thanatophilia
Sigmund Freud; “Beyond the Pleasure
Principle.” The Death Drive / Thanatos
versus Eros.
Giorgio Agamben Phantasm phantasmatic
Derrida: Spectres/ Ghosting.
Allegory
The film narrative is an allegory about the value of
art, life and death, or more specifically a dialogue
between the art in death and the death in art (the
images of Harry are foreshortened like Andrea
Mantegna’s painting Dead Christ (c. 1480), and in
one scene we view his feet sticking out of the
bath, a Hitchcock detail joke which is a reference
to Death of Marat (1793) another famous painting
from the historical canon, by the French painter JL David.
Two Deaths
Slavoj iek’s Lacanian inspired analysis of
this film argues that there are two deaths,
the real and the symbolic: Harry’s death the death of the father - is “a blot” isolated
as an understatement but also a settling of
accounts.
Amenable object
Ken Mogg suggested that the body
of Harry functions as a type of
Winnicottian ‘amenable object’
which has no intrinsic value other
than providing an opportunity to
experience and learn from one’s
experiences, somewhat akin to the
MacGuffin itself which function in
Hitchcock films as symbolic
drivers of narrative
Oscar Wilde again
Oscar Wilde. “We can forgive a man for
making a useful thing as long as he does not
admire it. The only excuse for making a
useless thing is that one admires it
intensely. All art is quite useless”