Cinema Sunday: North by Northwest

Today's Cinema Sunday continues the month long spotlight on the films of Alfred Hitchcock.   

Hitchcock's films are known for iconic imagery that takes root in the pop culture consciousness even if you never seen the movies themselves. 

Images that have frequently been homaged or parodied in other movies or TV shows. 

• Jimmy Stewart's spiraling vision in Vertigo.
• Janet Leigh being stabbed in the shower in Psycho.
• The avian threat that attacks Tippi Hedren in The Birds. 

Perhaps the most iconic image from a Hitchcock film is the famous scene of Cary Grant being chased through a corn field by an airplane. 

Today we turn to the movie that scene comes from, 1959's North By Northwest.   

1958. 

New York City.

The Oak Room restaurant at the Plaza Hotel. 

Advertising executive Roger Thornhill is having lunch with some friends when he raises his hand to summon a waiter.

At that EXACT same moment...

Two thugs have asked that same waiter to page George Kaplan. So when the waiter pages George Kaplan and Roger Thornhill raises his hand to summon the waiter, the two thugs figure they've found George Kaplan. 

Yeah, I know, it's a sketchy premise to hang a movie but here we are.

The thugs kidnap Thornhill and take him out to an estate in a upscale neighborhood in the suburbs. Thornhill is incessantly interrogated by a Cold War spy for information that George Kaplan knows. Thornhill keeps telling anyone who listens that he is NOT George Kaplan.  

The bad guys think claiming to be Thornhill is a ruse and decide that if they can't get "Kaplan" to talk, they'll kill him. 

Thornhill survives but nobody, not the police or even his own mother believes he was kidnapped by spies.   

Thornhill tries to track down the real Kaplan but's a mission that goes terribly awry when it leads to a United Nations diplomat being killed and guess who's been framed for the murder! 

By the way, who is this George Kaplan who has messed up Roger Thornhill's life so badly?

George Kaplan is no one.

Literally.

U.S. government spies have created a fictional spy to draw attention away from the real spy the government has embedded among them.  

Roger Thornhill is in danger because of a fictional man. 

But the agency elects not to save Thornhill just yet. The enemy spies are focused on "Kaplan" instead of the real double agent. 

Thornhill sneaks aboard the 20th Century Limited train to Chicago where he meets Eve Kendall.  Thornhill and Kendall spark with each other and form a close bond.  

But (and you've already guess this, you clever li'l dickens you) Eve Kendall is working for the enemy spies. 

And....

Yep! She's also the double agent working for the U.S. spy agency.  

There's stuff and shenanigans as Thornhill remains determined to track down Kaplan and the enemy spies are still after Thornhill convinced he's Kaplan.

Remember: Kaplan does not exist.

One thing leads to another and Thornhill finds himself alone at a remote bus stop surrounded by corn fields, 

Thornhill has been lead to believe that he is going to meet Kaplan here.

The bad guys have been alerted this is a perfect place to kill Thornhill/Kaplan/whatever.  

They're gonna kill him from an airplane. 

So we get that iconic scene, an intense sequence with Cary Grant running around a flat nearly barren field, ducking gun fire as the plane swoops low over him.

Spoiler: Thornhill escapes.

How? I gotta keep some secrets but damn, it's a doozy of an escape. 

Second to the air play attack scene is the chase around Mount Rushmore.  Spies get killed by gun fire but at least one gets sent plummeting to their death by a ridiculously big presidential head.  

The movie ends with two characters on a train engaged in legally sanctioned hetero-normative missionary positioned intercourse. We know this because they fall into bed together and...

Alfred Hitchcock sends the train through a tunnel. 

Oh, Alfred is such a scamp.  

North By Northwest hinges on such a flimsy premise to start, a chance mistaken identity.  But the sheer random element that puts Roger Thornhill can be seen not as a bug but as a feature. Literally anyone can find themselves in the crosshairs of danger. 

A lot of this film's success hangs on Cary Grant's charisma and talent. Thornhill greets his ever evolving situation with appropriate levels of terror and humor and resolve.  

Next week's Cinema Sunday wraps up Alfred Hitchcock month with Jimmy Stewart's return work for the master of suspense.

Next week, it's The Man Who Knew Too Much.