A Filmmaker's Review: "North by Northwest" (1959)

Gosh there is so much to say about this film and I don't really know where to begin. I adore this film and I've seen it quite a few times now. I had thought of organising a filmmaker's guide to it, but I don't think I would be able to choose one thing to focus on. Instead, my review is going to go over the things I really enjoyed concisely. First and foremost is the storyline. I thought that the plot in all of its simplicity was able to be expanded into something more complex, something more than it was because of the fact that the root of it was simple. It was about a man, mistaken to be another man who does not exist. From that, the entire storyline is expanded to us for our viewing pleasure. It is known of Hitchcock to create plots that are so simple that he can expand them into something more complex rather than starting with the complex idea.

The next thing that I really enjoyed about this film was the fact that it was one of Cary Grant's best films. He did so well in this and I thought that the whole film was basically carried by him. For a man who is being mistaken for another person, I thought that he did a very good job of maintaining that he knew who he was whilst also being confused about how he got involved - bear in mind that he would've known the storyline beforehand so it would've been more difficult to act like he didn't know what was going on. His acting was, as he has been in his other noir-like films, complex and well-researched. I think that he really got involved with the character's main worries and anxieties which were not being believed. From the very start there is a speculation by the police that the character may be lying and Cary Grant got really involved with keeping his character's name clean that there was a real look of concern on his face when all of this happened.

The next thing that I loved about this film was the main themes and metaphors. I think that this film plays with our own fears of not having something to identify ourselves by. This is exemplified by the time in which that Sir Alfred Hitchcock was making this film and identity theft was getting higher and higher in numbers. Even today, we are scared as the public of someone gaining access to our information or mistaking us for someone else. We are individuals scared of losing our individuality. The question is that in the grand scheme of things and when things start to go horribly wrong for someone else, do our identities really matter? Is there something more to an identity than just a name and how much does a name actually mean to us? Is our name our identity? What does a name represent? These are all the questions explored by Hitchcock when he uses a man who supposedly does not exist to replace the man that Cary Grant is portraying in the film. It is a strange name that is claimed to not exist, but may belong to someone and therefore, what does it mean?

I think that’s enough of me talking about this film. Hang on a minute. Another thing I liked about the film was the plane scene. I mean everyone likes the plane scene when he starts running away from the plane that is trying to run him over. It’s an iconic scene that has been copied in everything from other films to even The Simpsons. I think that there is a certain amount of respect we have to hold for this film even though it was the lesser known of the Hitchcock films and probably the lesser or least favourite of fans. However, it deserves a lot more respect for the sheer amount of work that went into the spy aspect of it. The aspect of the thriller is something Hitchcock is known for but the simplicity of the plot being expanded into a storyline which is widened by many lost identities and people changing place, double crossed and in danger - this makes for one grand super spy identity crisis thriller.