When the director of the Dublin film festival was introducing this years surprise film, she commented how 2009 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of ‘North by Northwest’ and how she had considered the movie as the surprise showing. Whatever her thought process was, she ultimately went with ‘Hamlet 2′. Then this May while I was holed up in a hotel room in Sofia after a day at a conference, I came across ‘North by Northwest’, thankfully not dubbed on a local Bulgarian station. Normally, when I have the TV to myself I flick incessantly; you come across a movie like ‘North by Northwest’ and you dont move past it. Then reading Harry Knowles review of ‘Transformers 2′ on Aint It Cool News this week he made reference to how Michael Bay had created effects shots for the movie during the writers strike and subsequently asked a script writer to string the scenes together with some semblance of a story. To my surprise Knowles commented that Hitchcock used the same technique to make ‘North by Northwest’, though with very different results. On reflection the comparison between the Master of Suspense and Bay is not entirely offensive, as Hitchcock did take a staged planned approach to his work, storyboarding, and quiet often was more interested in an idea or constructing an image or sequence than he was in drawing out a performance. In fact John Patterson over at the Guardian Arts blog, describes the movie as “series of eye-poppingly inventive sequences linked in the loosest way imaginable by a breathtakingly slender plotline” and essentially says the movie gave birth to the Bond movies and dim blockbusters. Patterson needs to aim a little lower with his over analysis however there is no ignoring the fact the movie is noted for its famous crop duster scene, and finale atop Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock would move on to ‘Psycho’ next, ‘North by Northwest’ is however considered Hitchcock at his undemanding best.

6. ‘North by Northwest’ as introduced the big man himself

5. The Crop Duster Scene

The idea for the famous cornfield scene came about when Hitchcock determined to reverse, as dramatically as possible, the clichéd movie trope in which a man is forced to run for his life from some sinister force. “How is this usually done?” asked Hitchcock. “A dark night at a narrow intersection of the city. The waiting victim standing in a pool of light under the street lamp. The cobbles are ‘washed with the recent rains.’?” So Hitchcock instructed his production designer to put his hero in a wide-open expanse in which he couldn’t hide—a completely flat cornfield in the middle of nowhere.

4. The Ice Cool Blonde
Maybe better known, or not, to modern audiences as Martha Kent in ‘Superman Returns’, Eve Saint Marie was also in the wonderful ‘On the Waterfront’ with Marlon Brando.

3. The Hitchcock Cameo

2. The MacGuffin

The Ark of the Covenant, the plans for the Death Star, the Ring to rule them all – a classic device used to propel the story forward, yet most often an object to which the audience will make little connection with, Hitchcock is noted for using in his movies. He in fact coined the term MacGuffin, a term to describe these objects. The MacGuffin in North by Northwest is microfilm with state secrets on it, the detail of these never materialises, we are merely told they are significant enough to set the bad guys in hot pursuit of Grant. The film is about the chase.

1. The Mount Rushmore Finale

While the crop-dusting chase was shot on location, the Mount Rushmore sequence was not. The U.S. Department of the Interior denied its cooperation and Hitchcock was forced to shoot the scene in the studio, employing oversized sets, backdrops and photographic plates of the actual monument to remarkable effect. Next to the shower murder in Psycho, it’s probably the most acclaimed, and frequently studied, scene in a Hitchcock movie.