North by Northwest.
Starring:
Cary Grant,
Eva Marie Saint,
James Mason.
Alfred Hitchcock
Ernest Lehmon.
Starring:
Cary Grant,
Eva Marie Saint,
James Mason.
Alfred Hitchcock
Ernest Lehmon.
North by Northwest is a typical 1959 American Thriller set mainly in New York. Starring Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, an innocent advertising executive, who is mistaken for a government agent names Mr Kaplan,by a group of foreign spies. He is then pursued across the country, trying to prove that he is not Mr Kaplan, and stay alive.
Thrillers are characterised by fast pacing frequent action scenes, which there are many of in North by Northwest. For example, the scene when Roger Thornhill is on the coach, and there is a crane shot view of a long straight deserted road, in which a coach is driving down which is a particularly calm moment without any music and barely any noise, which was setting up the next scene by building tension. Thornhill is then standing awkwardly across from another man who he believes he is supposed to be meeting, the man then gets on a bus in the opposite direction, and he is then left standing alone. At this moment the audience is left confused and tense for what is going to happen next and why he is left alone. He is then attacked by an aeroplane that had been flying in the air and making a noise in the background throughout the whole scene. After a few attempts of swooping down and trying to kill Mr Thornhill, control is then lost over the aeroplane and it the crashes into a lorry that is carrying a petrol tank, causing a deathly explosion. At this point, we think the main part of action in this scene is over, until it carries on further where Mr Thornhill the steals a passer-bys car, in order to get away which is holding the suspense in the viewers.
Devices such as Suspense, Red Herrings and Cliff-hangers are used frequently and extensively throughout Thrillers. The red Herring in this thriller is Mrs Kendal, played by Eve Marie Saint. She is firstly portrayed as, and misleads to be innocent which later on in the film, the audiences expectations are then tested by making her out as the villain. Which even further into the film, their expectations are then twisted again when she turns out to be the Hero in the plot.
The Macguffin is a plot element that captures the viewers’ attention and drives the story along, The Macguffin may be ambiguous undefined generic left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. For example, in North by Northwest the Macguffin is the microfilm; the whole story is evolved around the microfilm.
