[--------------------------------------------------------------------------] ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #721 `888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8 "Spies, Restaurants, and Laura's 888 888 888 888 888 Mercedes: A Critical Non-Art-Fag 888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8 Review of Alfred Hitchcock's 888 888 888 888 888 " North By Northwest" 888 888 `88b d88' 888 o by Big Daddy Bill o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8 7/6/99 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] This is the trouble with America, you know. Going into a restaurant to have dinner with some friends and BOOM, you're mistaken for an international spy and abducted kicking and screaming. Happens all the time. Don't you read the papers? Man if only I could exaggerate sarcasm on paper! Personally, I've never been mistaken for a spy. When secret agents come into a restaurant and call out some guy's name, I usually stay silent. No way, I'm no fool. Of course, it's not every day that secret agents come into a restaurant on a suspicion that a spy may be there. The film North by Northwest, though packed with action and suspense, has a shaky plot. Let me get this straight: top secret agents actually think that if they call out the name of a spy in a restaurant, he'll respond? Give me a break. Speed 2 had a better plot. I think Hitchcock tried to cover up holes in plot with excellent directing and mind reeling suspense, mixed in with good actors. A man named Roger Thornhill, the creme de la creme of success, enters a restaurant to meet up with business partners and is mistaken for a spy when the hit men have a busboy call out for George Kaplin. So they snatch him up, while he wittily quips away, and take him to a large mansion, _letting him see the name of the owner_. They sit him down, and while he denies being Kaplin, the Mr. Townsend (owner of the mansion, so it seems) is totally convinced he is George Kaplin, and won't take no for an answer. So doing no checking, no proofing that he is George Kaplin, they hog tie him to the couch and make him squeal like a... wrong movie. They force him down and make him drink bourbon. A whole bottle! Taking the poor drunken bastard to a cliff, they steal a car, slide him into the driver's seat and start driving him to the edge of the cliff. (Drunk driving. So malicious.) All the while, this horribly loud symphony beats on drums and attempts to play horns in time to the crack addicted percussion section. Suddenly, what drunks call a "moment of clarity" kicks in, just in time of course, when he's almost to the edge. So far, all the pushing and shoving in the world couldn't move the lead hit man, but somehow, while under the influence, Thorney-baby shoves him post-haste from the car, speeding away into the darkness only to be picked up by a cop. I wish cops today paid that much attention. Okay, so he gets lifted, prosecuted, and owes two dollars. Still doing no research, the bad guys still think that he's Kaplin. Thornhill goes to the hotel that the bad guy told him he was staying at, and pays his loving mother fifteen dollars to get the room key. Two dollars for driving drunk at a hundred miles an hour, fifteen to pay your mother off, what kind of society is this? They enter the room, and find out through the maid that no one has actually seen Kaplin. No surprise, he's a spy, trained for that sort of thing, right? So how was he found so easily at a restaurant, wining and dining his friends? They can't find him through international search, with the best of the best searching for one man who registers everything under one name, yet they find him in a freaking dining hall? Two words: yeah... right. So anyway, with this useless waste of time called a scene, they find out he's short and has good taste in fashion. I thought all spies were tall, maybe just a stereotype. They leave the room, but not before the main bad guy "A" calls him on the phone, just when they are about to exit. Getting the idea that hit men are almost to the room, he snatches Mother up and darts out the door, to the elevator, where the hit men wait for him. This is the part where the mother-instinct kicks in, and Mom asks a highly embarrassing question. Not "Are you wearing clean under-roos?" but "You gentlemen aren't really trying to kill my son, are you?" I can just imagine Roger whining and stamping his foot. "Mom! Don't embarrass me in front of my killers!" He escapes them, by throwing mom to the wolves, and really that's the last time we ever hear of her. What a good son. So he drives down to the UN building, because the wife told the cops that's where Townsend was. Uh oh, Townsend isn't Townsend. This guy is completely different. So the bad guy is using a different name. They start talking, and right before Thornhill is about to show him a picture of the fake Townsend, which he took from the hotel, the dude is knifed in the backside. Apparently nobody saw a mysterious man throwing a knife clear across the room. They guy dies in Thornhill's arms, and then he--get this-- _removes the knife from the guy's back_! Now that the guy is dead, all eyes turn on Thornhill as he his holding the bloody knife. So now he's a murderer, too. Keeping a rational head any man would be proud of, he pulls the knife on an approaching man, warning him away. Running out of the building to the train station, he hops on, the cops hot on his trail. He meets a woman. She betrays him. He finds out she's a double agent. They end up at Mount Rushmore. He pushes the hit man (no, he's not drunk this time) off the edge, and the homosexual secretary is shot in the back and some kind of microfilm is recovered. Yada yada yada, happily ever after with the voluptuous blonde. Fin. So the plot is horrid, okay, but Alfred Hitchcock is the bomb of directors with this authoritative control, the zooms and pans, close-ups of faces and shots high and low. It makes me want to give him some kind of award. Maybe I should hold a big meeting of directors and give them little golden statues for doing good work and making billions of dollars. What? Someone does that? Cary Grant, with his shaky accent, speaks my favorite line in the movie: "No I did not borrow Laura's Mercedes!" It sounds like, "Nu, I did not burro Laraa's Me-ce-des!" This guy is a good actor with facial muscles and body movements, but go to speech therapy. Eve Marie plays a good blonde, sexy, seductive double-agent, if there is such a type. Martin Landau plays the obsessive woman-hating homosexual, though he is good at hiding it. I think Mason, James Mason is excellent at setting the example for over-paid British bad buys and their stupid use of big words, and his obnoxious stuffy-nosed limey accent, saying lines like "Do stop playing games, Mr. Kaplin." Jesse Royce... I saw her like four times, what do you want me to say? Now, the Gardener/hit man should have gotten a name. I guess the union requires you to speak at _least_ three words in a movie before actually getting recognized. So what I'm saying is, yeah, I liked the movie. It's got great shots, wonderful use of authoritative directing, a nice rhythm and use of music, though really really loud and it doesn't sound like anybody actually played from sheet music. But if you're looking for good action and suspense... I hear Speed 2 is out on video. 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