MOVIE ESSAY: North By Northwest
A Classic Scene with Unconventional Direction
Pictures this: A man who has just killed a very beloved mobster is on the most wanted list. It’s nighttime, the streets are vacant, and the man is attempting to run away from a car that he thinks is chasing him. At first he begins by driving his car 100 miles per hour, but as he reaches a dead end he jumps out and climbs over the fence landing in a dark alleyway. Unfortunately for his sake, the car following him pulls up and rears him against the fence - out comes the Godfather who starts interrogating the man responsible for killing his partner.
If this were a scene straight out of a movie the thought running through everyone’s’ minds as they are sitting at the edge of their seats would be that the Godfather, and his posse, will eventually shoot the man, and drive off into the dark fog leaving him for dead. It’s a very conventional way of murdering someone after a big chase; it’s also a setting that has been used in numerous films time and time again.
What is unique and unusual about the way Alfred Hitchcock orchestrates his chase scenes is that they are not set in dark alley ways, and the weapon of choice is not usually a gun. The best scene to use as an example of Hitchcock’s remarkable creativity is the Prairie Stop chase scene between the crop duster and Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) in "North By Northwest."
Not only does this scene take place in broad daylight, but it also takes place in a cornfield that stretches miles as oppose to a dark alley that is narrow and confined. While the typical chase scene would not be complete without fast cuts to increase suspense, this scene is comprised of long takes, and very few cuts. There is no score overplaying the diegetic sound; it’s all natural from the loud roaring propeller of the crop duster to the crunching of Thornhill running through the cornfield.
It’s so intense that the audience doesn’t need suspenseful music, fast cuts, or even mysterious lighting to get into the scene, because due to the natural filming of this scene the viewers feel as if they’re in it.
The significance of this scene is that it’s a chase that is different, yet makes the point of showing the audience just how many lengths Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) will go to in order to kill Thornhill.
From Vandamms’ dramatic tone of voice to his brilliant schemes one would expect it to be inevitable that killing Thornhill would be attempted with great diligence, drama, and complication. The entire film is about maneuvering the simplest things in the most difficult ways, thus resulting in this chase being an extraordinarily long and complicated task. It would’ve been all too easy to shoot Thornhill in the beginning of the film, heck, the movie would’ve only been 20 minutes long, if that!
Even the title of the film works well with this scene. “North by Northwest” is an unlikely direction on the compass, so this chase in which Thornhill is running away from the crop duster comes with the absurd and ambiguity of direction. Thornhill does not know where to go, since the crop duster approached him so unexpectedly, so he begins to run through the crops aimlessly. Since “North by Northwest” is impossible to find on a compass, it is apparent that it is also impossible for Thornhill to know where he is going, and who is after him. One minute the crop duster is hard at work, and the next minute Thornhill is being attacked by it… this all plays with the perplexity the film, and title convey.
Hitchcock filmed an unforgettable chase scene without having to use any cliché gimmicks that people are used to seeing during thrillers. This scene was included in the film because Hitchcock wanted an excuse to do something unconventional, but he also wanted to insert a chase scene that stands out from the rest of the movie, and moves us further into understanding just how wanted and lost Thornhill is.
