North by northwest

North by Northwest

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Year: 1959

Actor: Cary Grant, James Mason, Eva Marie Saint

Narrative:

An innocent man is mistaken for a government agent and faces a group of foreign spies set out to kill him, he is pursued across the country in his bid for survival. Along the way he meets a young women who helps him but who also sets him up at thesame time.

Fast cutting:

Wihtin a thriller trailer fust cut action tends to be included. It is presented as quick snapshots of scenes one after another to allow a build up of suspense in the audience. Within Hitchcocks trailer we can see that a three part structure is used. At the second this is where the trailer starts slow, reaches a peak and then slows back down again building suspense. At around about 1:30 in this trailer the peak occurs. We are shown fast paced scenes consecutively, one after another, this allows a great sense of urgency and thrill to be created. We are shown scenes of gunshots, explosions, chases and so on in this peak. This works well to create ehigma codes and draw in the audience.

Characters:

Again this trailer and film has its typical characters. First is the main man being chased by the spies. His character is typical as he is very good looking, tall, abd very smartly dressed. This tends to be a typical character in all thrillers, at a glance his characteristics could be recognised as cool and un stopable although he is only a regular day-to-day man. The women in this film is also typical. She is very attractive, youthful and blonde, she is also sexualised alot in this movie. This is a typical character of thrillers as they tend to be the damsel in distress or mistress. However in this movie theres a slight twist of her character, she in fact sets up the main character, although she does this through her sexuality which again is typical.

Enigma codes:

withihin this movie there are multiple moments of suspense, cliffhangers and red herrings. For example the auction scene:

In this scene we can notice that first the sound track itself helps to create suspense but also the conversation between the two men displays elemnts of tensity, it is an awkward situation for both the men but also the women. The women is openly insulted due to his presence. The other male makes a comment of 'everybody' being in 'her room'. Indicating that she is promiscous, again intensifying the situation and making it even more awkward to bear.

Another scene of suspense that is more action pqcked is the helicopter scene. The moment where Cary Grant realises he has been set up and betrayed by this promiscous women.In this scens there is great use of visuals and as Hitchcock liked very much, a wide range of camera angle. We have close ups of his reaction, point of vie shots and so on:

Macguffin:

A macguffin is the plot element wihtin a movie that catches the viewers attention and drives the plot of the movie. The defining aspect of a MaCguffin is that the main characters in the story are almost willing to do absouloutely anything and sacrifice thier life and freedom to obtain it, which in this case is Cary Grant the suspected agent.  In fact sometimes the MaCguffin is ambigous and unidentified, sometimes throughout the whole film and completely un significant to the plot. Common ones are money, power, glory, survival and so on. In this movie the MaCguffin can be identified as Cary Grant himself, the spies want Cary and will do anything they can to get him, even if it means killing him with a helicopter type thing.

Alfred Hitchcock interview:

Below is an interview with Alfred Hitchcock himself about this amazing thriller: