MovieChat Forums > North by Northwest (1959) Discussion > A simpler world or a simplistic movie?

A simpler world or a simplistic movie?

posted 3 years ago by HerrStrauss (126)
2 replies | jump to latest

I watched the movie and I am torn between two different positions: the movie either depicts the real 1950-60 which was a much simpler world or it depicts an unreal fantasy. The world that you see in the movie is so different and simple: the police don’t investigate things properly and are fooled easily by criminals; someone can walk straight into the UN to see an ambassador without going through any security check and then can run away with ease; the hotel staff trust anyone walking to them and open doors for them and answer suspicious questions without being alarmed or calling the police; someone can just run past the train ticket counter; the train staff doesn’t check the bathrooms; you can easily run away from the hospital room while being put there by security services, etc. Was the world much more relaxed and people naïver back then? Or perhaps the movie creates an unreal world for its story? What do you think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Its a good question and I think...a little of both.

Forget trains...you could walk right onto PLANES without going through a metal detector up through the early 70's. The "larger world" was dangerous -- wars both hot and cold -- but everyday American life was considered pretty safe and security was pretty lax.

Grant escapes the hospital only via a pretty dangerous and daring "window to window" climb into another room. Its possible he got out past guards posted at his room ...and probably not many of those (heck, it looked like the Professor had to rely on Park Rangers for security.)

Hotel staff taking Grant at his word as "Mr Kaplan" and cops on trains not checking bathrooms(Eve told them nobody was there, and they believed her) seem OK enough.

But there are areas where Hitchcock played it fast and loose:

The UN. He said he had the REAL "private lounge" in the UN converted for the movie into "the public lounge" so that, Hitchcock said, "(Grant) could get in there.

And the business with the Glen Cove cops believing "Mrs. Townsend" over drunk driver Roger Thornhill made sense -- the movie(and Hitchcock) make sure to move Grant quickly into new adventures(the UN murder, being hunted for it) so as to take away too much need to "be rational." (And hey, at the mansion, the cops only met MRS. Townsend so they have reason to believe that Grant DID want to kill the REAL Mr. Townsend.)

And so forth and so on.

I think it is a mix of a simpler real-life era(less security; heck you could walk around the US Capitol anywhere), simplier times, and simplier movies "made for a mass audience." Coming pollitical thrillers like Three Days of the Condor in 1975 would be more "real."

North by Northwest has very sophisticated plotting, dialogue and acting but Hitchcock called it "a total fantasy" and I think that it plays like The Wizard of Oz for adults. It is not much of political thriller(Communism isn't even mentioned), its more of a fairy tale.

[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

If you know anything about Hitchcock, the answer is easy: simplistic movie.

Hitchcock had a traumatic incident as a kid where he was "scared straight" by being brought into a police station. Because of this, he made it a point to always make the police and the legal system as stupid as humanly possible, if not borderline retarded, whenever the protagonist was falsely accused of something.

The three movies that suffer from this the worst are Dial M for Murder, Vertigo and Strangers on a Train. In the first movie, for instance, the police just decide inside of two seconds that Grace Kelly's character--a tiny slip of a woman--murdered a career criminal who towered over her, and had also murdered another woman. The jury throws the book at her for good reason other than, "She was being blackmailed, so she must have killed him." When it came to things like law, justice, security, etc., this wasn't Hitch's strong suit.