North By Northwest

North By Northwest

The poster for 'North By North West'

Introduction to North By Northwest

North By Northwest was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Ernest Lehman. North By Northwest starred Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The film is about a 'innocent' New York advertising executive called Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies led by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was a famous English film director and producer. Hitchcock was renowned for many techniques he had pioneered in the suspense and psychological thriller genre, from this he is now known as 'The Master of Suspense'. Hitchcock was best known for films such as; 'North By Northwest', 'Psycho' and 'The Birds'.

North By Northwest

During the film 'North By Northwest' Hitchcock used many devices to make this film a very successful thriller by using suspense, red herring and cliffhangers. There is one scene in the film where Roger Thornhill is waiting by the side of a road, waiting for a man called "George Kaplan" who he had been mistaken for and in the distance, there was a crop duster who was spraying crops to get rid of the insects, however where it was spraying, there were no crops whatsoever. As the scene progresses the crop duster flies towards Roger Thornhill, it begins shooting at him. Before the shooting begins, suspense was constantly being built as Roger Thornhill keeps looking towards the crop duster.

Devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used quite a lot during the film and specially during the auction scene, where we see Roger Thornhill confront Phillip Vandamm in auction where is buying a Tarascan statue which contains microfilm.