North By Northwest

                     North By Northwest (1959)

  The film North By Northwest was a very well done film. I say this, because Alfred Hitchcock has a way to pull you in and be very intrigued. You will have intermixed emotions through out his films. North By Northwest was a classic example of how he is capable of achieving these feelings.

   He used lines, and placing of objects to symbolize tension, or the beginning of certain events that are about to occur. I had this feeling of uncertainty and I wasn’t sure why. For an example, he was using a cluster of trees to create distance between the two characters in the film (Roger O. Thornhill and Eve Kendall). This was a scene in a movie where they hadn’t seen each other in quite some time and had a few topics that needed to be resolved. At one point, there was a diamond-shaped cluster of trees, and this one tree was the main focus of the frame. Roger and Eve were at the two corners of the frame, so you could tell that there was tension in the air. They later moved closer together, so that there was now only one tree left in between them, but you could still tell that there was distance between characters.

  The last movie that I watched was The Birds, which was also directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This movie I found very similar to North By Northwest, because of the similar lead roles. He always uses a very pretty, smart, independent blonde woman for the lead role. This was the character of Eve Kendall. I quite admired her, because I liked the fact that she was able to fend for herself, and do anything she would have wanted to.

  Another thing that I picked up on in Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were the abrupt and unfinished endings. At the end of this movie, I wasn’t sure if he woke up from a dream, if they died, or if it actually ended. I can see why he would have thought that the ending would have worked, but in my opinion I think he could have added more. He probably thought that he had explained that they were back on the train and every thing was fine, but I just didn’t think that was enough.

     Personally, I think that he should have clearly established that they got up and talked to the detectives. It feels like he got lazy with the ending so he just decided to cut out 5 minutes by ending it the way he did.

Over all I really enjoyed this movie and it is a must see for anybody that enjoys thrillers.