NORTH BY NORTHWEST: 4K UHD Blu-ray (MGM, 1959) Warner Home Video

Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959) can incontrovertibly be classified under the header of ‘perfect pictures.’ Every film-maker would give a tithe of their own creative genius, and most of their soul to have made it. After all, ‘perfect pictures’ are few and far between. Although, in retrospect, they seem to come in waves – some years, more fruitfully than others, to produce contenders for the top spot. 1939 immediately comes to mind. But if a director can pull off at least one movie in his/her lifetime to be considered for inclusion, it goes without saying, dame fortune has smiled. In Alfred Hitchcock’s case, the lady must have been roiling in orgasmic ecstasy as Hitchcock has overpopulated this rarefied breed with the likes of Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, I Confess, Notorious, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds among others – an enviable spate, gleaned from an embarrassment of riches. Important, to note, Hitchcock is in hallowed company with the likes of John Ford, William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, George Stevens, and, George Cukor – each, a master of the American cinema. But I digress. 

Arguably, North by Northwest remains the Hitchcock adventure yarn by which all others are measured. It was, ostensibly, preordained in a fruitful tete-a-tete between Hitch’ and his screenwriter, Ernest Lehman, the former, suggesting he had always wanted to make a movie with a chase across the faces of Mt. Rushmore, the latter, making no bones about his lifelong passion to craft the ultimate Hitchcockian thrill ride. Thematically, it’s all here – the ‘wrong man’, the cool blonde, the ingenious misdirection diverting us from the MacGuffin (the mysterious microfilm hidden in a piece of African sculpture whose contents is never divulged). North by Northwest excels as an exemplar of the taut American thriller; also, as a template of the technological wizardry and craftsmanship Hitchcock had been honing ever since his arrival in Hollywood. The audience is, of course, being cleverly manipulated to look the other way, much in the vein as Hitchcock’s subterfuge to snag a master shot of the film’s star, Cary Grant entering the U.N.’s General Assembly Building right under the noses of security men assigned to prevent just such a photographic event from happening.

At the beginning of North by Northwest, our hero, Madison Ave. ad exec, Roger O. Thornhill (the ‘O.’ added by Hitch as a snub of David ‘O.’ Selznick, whose micro-management as producer on Hitchcock’s earliest pictures, he positively abhorred) slyly informs his secretary, Maggie (Doreen Lang) that “…in the world of advertising there’s no such thing as a lie… only the expedient exaggeration of the truth.” This is a rather telling prognostication as to where Lehman’s clever concoction will shortly lead. Because North by Northwest makes no sense at all. Not the modus operandi of the villains, or the misdirection by which they inaccurately assume they have found their man, nor the penultimate fakery – a faux assassination in a room full of innocent onlookers – anyone of which could have blown the cover - throwing the villains off the scent, nor the abbreviated finale, in which, precariously clinging to a steep and craggy precipice our hero and his paramour are suddenly whisked into the upper birth of a speeding train, barreling onward into marital bliss. Those expecting genuine logic should seek it elsewhere. Thankfully, Hitchcock has replaced this with ‘movie’ logic, the kind that has to merely ‘appear’ truthful to click. And it does. North by Northwest is a romantic fantasy wrapped in the enigma of a spy show – teeming in implausibly staged vignettes that Hitchcock manages to build and build into a harrowing roller coaster ride. But what happens when the proverbial ‘mouse’ caught in this set-up decides to turn the tables and chase the ‘cat’?

One forgets Hitchcock and MGM – the studio footing the bills – were not exactly in syncopated rhythm at the outset of this project. Indeed, the National Park Service (NPS) was downright adverse to having even a film-maker of such renown and international stature shoot anything near Mount Rushmore – its ‘Shrine of Democracy’ as the NPS firmly believed that to stage mayhem on the stone-chiseled presidential visages was akin to a kind of memorial-defacing sacrilege.  Not about to let a little thing like the U.S. Federal Government intervene in his plans, Hitchcock had his production designer, Robert F. Boyle simply recreate Rushmore’s stoic granite façade out of papier mâché on Metro’s sound stages. As if to tempt fate and tease the powers that be, Hitchcock humorously suggested he had always wanted to depict a man dangling off Lincoln’s eyebrow. Meanwhile, aspiring to handcraft the Hitchcock thriller to end all Hitchcock thrillers, screenwriter, Ernest Lehman arguably threw every scenario he could think of into this exotic mix of make-believe, starting with Hitchcock’s time-honored affinity for telling tall tales about the ‘wrong man’ – this one, a truly inspired case of ‘mistaken identity’, wed to diplomatic intrigues, sexual extortion, and devious role playing.

While Lehman summoned all of his creative juices for this knotty spy adventure, he never lost sight to infuse it with a tart sense of humor. For all its devastatingly high-spirited action, North by Northwest is as well-regarded for its witty badinage. It tetter-totters into those early halcyon days in Cary Grant’s career in screwball comedy. As example; one, immediately calls to mind the instance where Grant’s frazzled ad man, having been forced to consume a whole bottle of bourbon, is taken to the Glencoe Police Station and administered a test to prove his intoxication. Grant – extending his arms to illustrate the amount of alcohol he has consumed – then, sprawls out on the table to go to sleep at the first inference a blood sample is to be drawn, muttering, “How disgusting!” Throughout the picture, Grant is able to exercise his inimitable charisma with a broad finesse, teasing co-star, Eva Marie Saint’s Eve Kendall into accepting his sexual advances, playfully adding “why are you so good to me?”, and later, mocking his would-be assassins, as he is escorted from an auction house by police with, “Oh nice try. Better luck next time, old man!”  Yet, perhaps the most charismatic bit of unrelated comedy arrives late in the picture as Roger, determined to escape his locked hospital room, sneaks across the sill to the next open window, discovered by a female patient who sternly orders him to ‘stop!’ before sighing at her good fortune for having discovered Cary Grant skulking about in the dark - and whispering with great longing, ‘stop!’ to which Grant smugly chuckles for the camera before nimbly departing down the hall.

Given North by Northwest was made at MGM, a studio best known for its glamor, it remains perhaps unsurprising Robert Boyle’s set designs (with art direction from William A. Horning and Merrill Pye) take great advantage and considerable artistic liberties with the locations. The Frank Lloyd-Wright-inspired lair of the enemy, Phillip Vandamm (played with mellifluous menace by James Mason) is an implausibly elegant and conspicuous ‘hideaway’, complete with a pot-lit landing strip, high atop Rushmore’s summit, surely to have drawn outrage from the National Parks Service had it actually been located anywhere near the presidential busts. The high angle interiors of the United Nations Building – an obvious matte, infer an air of high-style, brightly lit transparency to all the cloak and dagger going on behind the scenes. But the most dramatic of these fabricated locales remains the paper-mâché and plaster fronts depicting a moonlit Rushmore. As no such scaling of the actual monument would have been permitted, even if the principals and crew had been harnessed into the proper climbing gear, authorization instead was granted to Hitchcock to shoot the monument from a distance, but only if no ‘acts of violence’ were depicted.

This agreement between MGM and the National Parks Services (NPS) extended to “any simulation or mock-up of the sculpture or talus slope.”  Perhaps, in advance of the controversy that was to dog him, Hitchcock shot – with the NPS’s permission – a single day at Rushmore, for the cafeteria scene where Roger’s faux assassination is staged, in addition to inserts of Roger’s body being taken away on a stretcher, and Eve, escaping the scene of the crime in her car. And while only a few brief shots of the actual monument could be glimpsed from the observation terrace, Hitchcock almost immediately reneged on his promise not to recreate any acts of violence on MGM’s ‘mock-up’. By the time these bits were in the can, Boyle was already putting the finishing touches on their facsimile inside a soundstage at Culver City. If, as they had been successful in detouring Hitchcock from shooting anything extra on their home turf, the NPS had absolutely zero authority to tell the master of suspense what he could and could not do back in Hollywood. Hitchcock would strain the NPS’s good graces even further when he suggested to Variety’s film critic, Alice Hughes, he had actually ‘gotten away’ with shooting his climax on the real Mt. Rushmore – the story, picked up and run without first confirming the facts. In retaliation, the NPS wrote a strong letter of regret to then MGM studio chief, Joseph E. Vogel, noting their blatant disregard for the pact earlier agreed upon in good faith. The NPS also ordered Vogel to remove the screen credit that read in part – ‘we gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the United States Department of the Interior and the National Park Service in the actual filming of the scenes at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota’.

As the controversy refused to die, the NPS – finding no satisfaction in their dealings with representatives from MGM, and, the various governing bodies of film production and screen censorship, turned their attentions to South Dakota's senior senator, Karl E. Mundt. And while Mundt stood on the side of the government’s right to consider MGM’s sidestepping of their original arrangement as a blatant desecration of the monument itself, suggesting everything from recalling the picture to having its penultimate sequence re-edited, re-shot, or scrapped altogether, petitioning for new legislation to be enacted that would impose far greater stringency on future picture-making alliances with the NPS, in the end, even Mundt had to concede it was too late to do anything about North By Northwest, except buy a ticket for its general release and judge the results for himself.  In the end, Hitchcock had his way, the movie hit theaters unaltered, and, to much critical fanfare and box office success. Audiences, oblivious to all this backstage bickering, were enthralled by the show, particularly its climactic pursuit across the presidential faces.

After the abysmal box office performance of his psychologically complex, Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest marked a sizable rebound in Hitchcock’s stature with critics and fans alike. It was - perhaps even beyond Hitch’s own wildest dreams – falling back on his more traditional assemblage of dark sadism and light humor to draw the audience nearer his artistry. Viewing North by Northwest today, one is immediately struck by its impossible perfection as a slick and stylish escapist fantasy, incorporating nearly every devise from the director’s illustrious bag of tricks. Over the years, rumors have circulated Hitchcock unintentionally mentioned the idea for the project to James Stewart while putting the finishing touches on Vertigo. When Stewart became eager to play the lead, Hitchcock was forced to admit he had already cast Cary Grant. However, there are problems with this story. First, Hitchcock seldom worked far in advance in planning his subsequent projects – preferring instead to be wholly invested in the movie at hand, and worry about what came next only after everything was already in the can and on its way to the premiere. In general, but specifically at this point in his career, Hitchcock took his time deciding what would come next. Since North by Northwest was not a pre-sold play or movie property waiting in the wings, it seems highly unlikely the idea would have come to him off the cuff, even in passing, while on the set of Vertigo.

Also, given the solid working relationship between Hitchcock and Stewart, it does not make much sense for Hitchcock to mention it to Stewart if he had no interest in casting him. And even if Hitchcock had been contemplating Stewart as his star, more than likely, MGM would have killed that idea at the outset. Like Hitchcock, MGM was in a tug-o-war with its’ New York stockholders for a mega hit. Securing Hitchcock’s services was one way of practically guaranteeing box office gold. Another, was to allow the master of suspense his girth of opportunities to explore the project on his own terms, with relative autonomy.

Whatever the reason, North by Northwest stars Cary Grant as harried ad man, Roger O. Thornhill. After being mistaken as an FBI secret agent by Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), Roger quickly discovers he is a sitting duck, rift for multiple attempts on his life by Vandamm’s henchmen…unless he can get to the bottom of things. But even Roger’s mum (Jessie Royce-Landis) does not believe his outlandish claims. (Aside: Royce-Landis played Grace Kelly’s mother in To Catch a Thief.) Unfortunately, Roger’s contact of UN political analyst, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober) – totally oblivious to the crimes being perpetrated at his summer home in his absence - goes horribly awry when one of Vandamm’s goons, Valerian (Adam Williams) stabs Townsend in the middle of the press room, making it appear as though Roger is the killer. Considered a fugitive, Roger next stumbles into Eve Kendell (Eva Marie Saint, wearing off-the-rack Bergdorf Goodman as Hitchcock despised the ‘wardrobe’ designed for her by Helen Rose). Eve is a mysterious flirt, traveling by train and oddly intent on helping Roger elude both Vandamm’s captors and the authorities. Roger comes to trust Eve. The two have an affair.

Alas, Roger’s faith in Eve is shaken after she sets him up for a rendezvous in the middle of nowhere, only to be accosted by a crop-dusting biplane. Barely escaping the onslaught, and stealing a truck to drive himself to the next scheduled port of call in Chicago, Roger unearths that Eve appears to be working for Vandamm. Now, Roger confronts their motley crew during a public auction, thereby exposing Eve to terrible danger. You see, Eve is the FBI double agent working right under Vandamm’s nose. Intervening on her behalf, The Professor (Leo G. Carroll – a beloved of Hitchcock’s) arrives to explain the situation to Roger. There is only one thing to do. Stage a murder – his! In the crowded commissary near Mt. Rushmore, Roger plots his faux revenge on Eve who, primed for the performance, fires a pistol of blanks in the presence of all, including Vandamm and his right-hand, Leonard (Martin Landau) before fleeing the scene. The Professor declares Roger dead, thus, though only momentarily, to throw the scent off Vandamm’s suspicions about Eve.

Not long thereafter, Leonard works out the details of the ruse as played, and, Vandamm elects only to pretend to trust Eve again, instructing Leonard secretly he will dispose of her over a large body of water once the plane is in the air. Detained by the professor at a local hospital, Roger escapes and pursues Eve to Vandamm’s retreat, nestled high above the famed Mt. Rushmore landmark. Forewarning Eve of Vandamm’s intent to murder her, Roger and Eve make their daring escape across the presidential facades, pursued by Leonard and Valerian. In the penultimate struggle, Valerian is tossed over the side of the monument. But Leonard manages to intercept Roger and Eve, the couple now dangling on the edge of their certain deaths. Before he can finish the job, Leonard is shot by police at the Professor’s behest, and Roger, renewed in his energies, rescues Eve, whom he whisks into an upper birth of a train bound for New York, having at last made an honest woman of her. In a bit of Hitchcock’s devilishly playful Freudianism, Roger and Eve’s train barrels into a tunnel, giving the audience no illusions about the couple’s honeymoon night. 

65 years on, North by Northwest remains Hitchcock’s most captivatingly escapist thrillers, its only real companion piece in the master’s catalog, - 1955’s To Catch a Thief (also, with Cary Grant, and, also, shot in Paramount’s patented widescreen format - VistaVision, expressly licensed by MGM for this movie). The chemistry between Grant and Eva Marie Saint is missing the kinetic sparks of eroticism Grant generated with ‘Thief’s Grace Kelly, forever ensconced as Hitchcock’s ultimate ‘cool blonde.’ But what Saint lacks is spice, she more than makes up for in slinky sass. In years yet to come, Saint would extol the virtues of her co-star’s gentlemanly demeanor, his professionalism, and, the courtesies extended along the way to ensure all points of his partnership were smoothly integrated into Hitchcock’s singular vision for the final product.

Hitchcock relied heavily on matte paintings throughout North by Northwest, full scale mock-ups wed to process photography. The movie’s two most memorable set pieces – the biplane assault on Roger, and, daring escape across the faces of Mt. Rushmore are the most flamboyant examples of this seamless extension of make-believe. For the picture’s climax, Robert Boyle’s elaborate sketches were transformed by MGM’s scenic art department into even more ambitiously authentic plaster replicas of Rushmore’s presidential visages. At Hitchcock's request, MGM licensed VistaVision from Paramount, after he staunchly refused to comply with producer, Joseph Vogel’s suggestion to shoot his masterpiece in Cinemascope.

Although the experience of making North by Northwest, was mostly an enjoyable one for all concerned, Hitchcock would never make another movie at MGM. North by Northwest also marked the last time Hitchcock worked with Cary Grant – their alliance begun with 1941’s Suspicion.  Rumors have abounded as to why these two parted ways – especially since North by Northwest was, by far, their most profitable collaboration. One plausible reason is Grant had sincerely begun to feel as though his days as a leading man were numbered. While the actresses Grant was frequently paired with were getting incrementally younger, Grant was pushing a debonaire 55 in 1959.  And although Grant would appear in six more movies before officially retiring, the only truly notable effort among them remains director, Stanley Donen’s full-on, faux Hitchcockian-styled caper, Charade (1963).

North by Northwest was hugely influential on producer, Albert R. Broccoli. Indeed, Broccoli would rather shamelessly ‘borrow’ from Hitchcock’s inspiration, the crop duster sequence transformed into a helicopter assault on Sean Connery’s James Bond during the climax of 1963’s From Russia With Love. The Ian Fleming novel has no literary equivalent to this moment in the picture. Homage or rip-off. You decide. Interesting too, Hitchcock brought back Jessie Royce Landis to play Cary Grant’s mother, despite the actress being only 9 years Grant’s senior in real life. Landis had played Grace Kelly’s mother in To Catch a Thief – a somewhat more convincing separation of 34 years separating the two actresses. Yet, to the Landis’ credit, she remains the only middle-age matriarch figure to ever appear in two Hitchcock thrillers, neither represented as either a despicable curmudgeon or deliciously dotty derelict. Hitchcock’s disdain for such ladies of leisure was duly noted. So, his affinity for Landis must have been very great indeed. Each of her mothers is infused with a taut and savage wit, and, particularly in ‘Thief’, a razor-sharp lack of tact to call a spade a spade to its face.

At 136 mins, North by Northwest remains Hitchcock’s longest thriller. Ernest Lehmen’s participation came, presumably, at the behest of longtime Hitchcock collaborator, Bernard Herrmann. Indeed, Herrmann had scored the last four Hitchcock pictures, and, in addition to this movie, would go on to write the music for two more before the master of suspense, and, the master of the baton had their epic falling out over creative differences on the set of Marnie (1964). Ironically, however, the picture to unite their talents was not North by Northwest, but The Wreck of the Mary Deare – alas, never to come to fruition with any of their participations, though eventually to hit screens co-starring Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston, directed by Michael Anderson. But Lehman’s claim, he and Hitch ironed out the details of North by Northwest over a cocktail luncheon, seemingly on nothing more than an arc of their collaborative juices flowing gets complicated by the fact a journalist named Otis Guernsey had drafted – and sold to Hitchcock - a WWII treatment of a story whereupon a dead soldier gets rechristened as an elusive spy-courier to misdirect the Nazis. Guernsey’s tale predates North by Northwest by almost 9 years! Whatever the truth in it, the finished product has been enthralling audiences for 65 years. And Lehman, perhaps so enamored by its success, would regurgitate pretty much all of his inspiration here for the lesser known/lesser seen, and just plain ‘lesser’ caper, The Prize (1963) with Paul Newman woefully miscast in the role of the suave fellow wrongly embroiled in a murder plot.

Warner Home Video has come around to a 4K restoration of North by Northwest. Actually, it’s been a banner year for 4K releases from WB, capped off by this beautifully rendered, reference-quality disc. Important to note: considerable effort has been poured into a further remastering from the 2013 Blu-ray (which was state-of-the-art then). The proof here, is in the texture and layering of detail; also, in the astounding level of color saturation. The South Dakota crop dusting sequence, as example, previously registering in drab gray/brown hues, now pops as it should with subtly nuanced depths of burnt oranges, saffron yellows and acrid clouds of billowing black smoke. Flesh tones have been masterfully rendered and lean, more appropriately, to an ever so slightly ‘pinker’ hue. Grant’s sun-kissed brownish tint is complimented by Eva Marie Saint’s silky peaches and cream skin. Contrast is bang-on excellent.  Fine details abound, even during the darkest sequences. The image here is – in a word – delicious! Addressing an elephant in the room, over the decades, North By Northwest has been released to home video in various aspect ratios. VistaVision showed at 1.66:1 However, theatrically, MGM projected it at 1.75:1. The 4K scans in at 1.85:1, which does not appear to adversely affect the framing of the image in any way.

This 4K of North by Northwest has been given an Atmos 7.1 DTS upgrade. We also get a ‘theatrical restored’ 2.0 mono mix. Curiously, WB has ditched the 5.1 DTS that accompanied the Blu. And, in comparing the 5.1 on the original Blu to the 7.1 on the 4K, the subtleties are negligible at best. There’s a bit more spaciousness to the SFX during the crop-dusting sequence, and Bernard Herrmann’s score gets full reign to dominate. But dialogue is still front and center and solidly represented. Extras have been ported over from the old Blu and include an audio commentary by Ernest Lehman, the Eva-Marie Saint hosted ‘making of’ documentary, plus three featurettes devoted to extoling the virtues of the movie: the newly produced Cinematography, Score and the Art of the Edit, The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style, and, North by Northwest: One for the Ages. Cumulatively, there is almost 2 ½ hrs. of content here to enjoy. Lost in translation, the exquisite bio on Cary Grant – ‘A Class Apart’. This was originally an extra on Warner’s 2-disc DVD of Bringing Up Baby, and is available elsewhere on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive.  Bottom line: North by Northwest in 4K is an immaculate restoration. Do we really need to add…very – very – highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

4.5