In the movie North By Northwest, an ordinary businessman from New York City gets mistaken for an FBI agent by a group of foreign mob guys. Vandamm and his associates kidnap Thornhill, believing him to be an agent named George Kaplan, and when he refuses to cooperate, they try to set him up to fake his death. However, he gets arrested instead. Then he tries to prove his innocence by tracking down George Kaplan and having him explain what’s going on. When Vandamm’s men frame him for a murder of a U.N. man, he flees on the train, where he meets a girl. The rest of the movie deals with the romance between the two, as well as some twists regarding who she works for.

Obviously it is pretty common knowledge that Alfred Hitchcock is a cinematic genius. However, this was my first full Hitchcock film, and I can’t say I was disappointed. Every detail was thought out, and every shot was taken the way it was for a reason. One thing that I really liked about this film was that Thornhill was a regular guy, who happened to get roped into this federal situation by being mistaken through no real fault of his own. However, he reacts not in a James Bond way, but in a way showing how little experience he has with anything like this, and he is just trying to survive. I watched a video breaking down the making of North by Northwest and in it, a clip of an interview with Hitchcock showed him saying, “But I’ve always gone for average man, the ordinary individual, going through extraordinary experiences...it enables the audience to identify themselves much more closely with the individual.” I really saw this in North by Northwest. It made the movie, and what is not necessarily a very believable story more enjoyable to watch. Since it’s unlikely that someone would actually be mistaken and dragged into this lifestyle, the way that Hitchcock makes him act just as an actual New York City businessman trying to clear his name would act. I did some research about the making of this film and found that it came from an idea that a writer took to Hitchcock and some cinematic ideas that he wanted to try. Only a few of these ideas made it into the film, but one of the big ones he had was a chase scene across Mount Rushmore. This is the climactic scene. However, I was disappointed with this because it didn’t seem very realistic, and kind of put a fake feel over the movie. Another thing that I found through research was that the writers didn’t really know what direction they were taking the story in. They had about three acts storyboarded, and ended up with about ten. One of them said that he created new problems, and therefore had to create new solutions. This really added to the effect of Thornhill being along for the ride and not knowing at all where it was going, kind of like the writers.

I would definitely recommend this movie. I think everyone should watch at least one Hitchcock film, and this is certainly a good one, since some people think it was him trying to outdo anything else he’d done. However, I thought that like most older films, it took a long time to get to things that could’ve happened much quicker. This is common in older films though. Every shot seemed intentional, and well thought out, which makes sense because it’s Hitchcock but it was interesting to see how they made the audience think or feel a certain way, whether it was uncomfortable or something else. The music also added to it. It was very dissonant and loud and added tension to scenes that didn’t necessarily have a lot of action. Overall I would recommend this movie.