My First Time… Watching ‘North By Northwest’

Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, and in honor of the famed auteur’s 115th birthday, we’ve declared it Hitchcock Week on Decider. Click here to follow our coverage.

When I was about 13 or 14 — I can’t remember which teen — I had a summer where I really wanted to be a film director. My mom then told me that I had to become acquainted with Alfred Hitchcock. So, she bought me Psycho on VHS, rented Vertigo for me and watched we watched Rear Window and How To Catch A Thief on AMC together. One film we missed, though, was North By Northwest.

Obviously, I know the general gist of the film. Cary Grant plays an ordinary Joe who gets caught up in a spy game and Eva Marie Saint is a seductive blonde with a secret. Grant runs away from a plane and there’s an epic climax at Mount Rushmore. The one thing I don’t know is how that all fits together. So, here it goes. I’m watching North By Northwest all the way through for the very first time. I hope it doesn’t disappoint (and I also hope that “North By Northwest” doesn’t eventually become the name of Kim and Kanye’s daughter’s inevitable vanity fashion line).

3:52 – I’m far less impressed with everything that Jon Hamm does on Mad Men now that I’ve seen a mere two minutes of Cary Grant as a 1959 ad man.

14:14 – Old people fought over the weirdest things. Like, if people were offering you a bottle of free Bourbon, why fight them?

15:44 – I’m just going to call it now and say that I think the moral of this movie is going to be, “Don’t drink and drive and get involved in mass conspiracies.”

21:21 – It’s a great tragedy that Alfred Hitchcock didn’t direct The Hangover. Look at those angles. Look at drunk Cary Grant’s butt. That could be Bradley Cooper’s well-lit hungover butt.

33:38 – “Gee, thanks for embarrassing me by asking my killers if they’re going to kill me, Mom.”

37:57 – Don’t touch the murder weapon, you fucking idiot! Have you never seen a crime drama? Or spy thriller? Or film directed by Alfred Hitchcock?

44:38 – I get that she’s hot, but this is no time for a meet cute, dude.

48:05 – It’s also a great tragedy that Hitchcock didn’t direct Before Sunrise. As much as I love that film, it could use a few stabbings. For pacing, you know.

59:01 – I SPY SPY EYES.

1:13:16 – Oh, I’ve seen this before.

1:28:27 – Oh, snap an Actor’s Studio burn.

1:40:52 – What a spectacular matte painting!

1:45:10 – I did not see this plot twist. Like, any of it. Like, the gun, the death, the fake death, the fake gun.

1:46:44 – “Hey, sorry I pretended to shoot you.”

1:52:03 – Shirtless Cary Grant alert!

2:00:46 – Can people, like, stop trying to kill each other with guns filled with blanks? It’s very confusing and it cuts the tension in a scene because you intellectually know that there’s a good chance that no one is about to get hurt.

2:11:54 – Yes, let’s discuss marriage while dangling from Mount Rushmore. That makes sense.

2:13:46 – Could you imagine if after all this, all that’s on the microfilm is BOOBS?

2:14:37 – Wait. What? That can’t be how it ends.

2:14:45 – Oh. That’s how it ends. Well, I was wrong. The moral of this movie was, “Do drink and drive and get involved in mass conspiracies.”

Final thoughts: North By Northwest has its climax at a recognizable monument: Mount Rushmore. I find that incredibly interesting because watching this film filled me with the same feeling that I get when I visit famous monuments that I’ve grown up seeing in photos and on movies. There’s a sense that I should be filled with awe and wonder, but whether I was looking at the Acropolis or Big Ben, all I ever really thought to myself was, “Yup, it looks as good in person as it does in photos.”

North By Northwest is an expertly crafted film. Each frame is inspired. Both Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint deliver stellar performances. Hitchcock does a great job of hooking the audience and building tension. However, watching this film left me a tad bit cold. I’ve seen all the most impressive shots and scenes before. Seeing them in context gave me a greater appreciation for why they’re so great, but I still just sort of nodded to myself, thinking, “Yeah, all those frames look as great in the film as they do taken out of it.”

I think what impressed me the most is how fluid Hitchcock is. In one film, he gave us a perfectly tense spy drama, a thrilling adventure story, a sexy romance and there were bursts of absolute comedy. Even if he had only ever directed this film, he’d have had an irrevocable influence on contemporary cinema.

Finally, I realize that it doesn’t matter what was on that microfilm. I understand what a McGuffin is. However, that’s precisely why I hope that after all that hassle, it was just BOOBS.

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Photos: MGM