Dawn, you missed the set-up. That is the reason you were confused. In the very beginning, in the restaurant, Roger Thornhill said to the gentlemen that he was meeting with that he wanted to send a telegram, so he called for the restaurant employee. That restaurant employee was paging George Caplan. The men that abducted Roger saw his call for the restaurant employee while the employee was calling for Caplan, so assumed Roger was answering the page - meaning that Roger was Caplan. It was a mistaken identity situation. You really need to pay close attention to what is going on at the beginning of a Hitchcock film. He often does the set-up for the movie in the first few minutes and quite often it is very quick.
Agreed, this is often missed. I bought a copy about 10 years ago just to analyze all the stuff I missed over the years. It also highlights those goons are bumbling idiots, they nabbed someone with nothing to go on. I guess we could wonder if they were getting desperate. Perhaps Van Damm threatened them to get the spy. Even more interesting, some agent(s) had to set up all those hotels, how they didn't get caught I don't know. I hope Dawn rewatches this on her own. The point of first time watchings is to engage with us, the audience, but she loved it so much I'm sure she'll see it again soon. Some reacting channels poopoo a movie they don't understand because they missed a key point.
I missed the public announcement for Kaplan for more than the first viewing. A bit odd to be smacking my forehead about a movie I had seen several times, but finally caught why the misidentification happened.
I have seen this movie dozens of times. Not to over-analyze, but I agree most reactors miss the set-up....but, the mistaken identity storyline is established again and again in the following scenes. The happy accident of it all is revealed later and almost impossible to figure out ahead of time, of course.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST inspired the making of James Bond movies a lot. Alfred Hitchcock was asked to direct the first 007 but declined (he wanted to go independent). Cary Grant was on the shortlist for playing James Bond, but he only wanted to do one movie, and the James Bond people wanted a serial.
The 39 Steps (1935) > Saboteur (1942) > North by Northwest (1959) are all essentially the same film. Hitchcock was fascinated by/ obsessed with the idea of an innocent everyman who, through no fault of his own, stumbles upon a deadly conspiracy and is wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit. The basic pattern of these films involves a cross-country chase as the protagonist attempts to unmask and foil the conspirators and prove his own innocence. He is aided by a (usually initially reluctant but ultimately sympathetic and ) female stranger, and undergoes a series of dangerous and suspenseful close calls along the way. Other Hitchcock trademarks include a finely honed script with moments of witty banter and sly double-entendres, and a cultured, urbane master villain.
9:55 "Pay the two dollars". A reference to an old vaudeville routine about a guy cited for a trivial offense with a $2 fine, like littering, but his self-important attorney won't let it go, costing the poor guy more suffering at each turn. Like telling someone, "Just deal with it." Love the design and costuming of this picture, with New York City of 1959, so old, yet curiously modern. Love the trains and Grand Central Station. A reminder that you could get along without mobile phones back then, because there were public phones spaced a few hundred meters apart everywhere, and they worked just fine.
@@drg3712Yes, one imagines. I looked it up. The original routine appears in the movie Ziegfeld Follies of 1945, with Victor Moore and Edward Arnold. It was as familiar to audiences in 1959 as jokes like Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch" are now.
Believe it or not, Eva Marie Saint, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time is still alive. She turned 99 on July 4, 2023. She's truly one of the last of the Golden Age of Hollywood! PS: Dawn, you think too much! About the end, he was just pulling her up to the bed, sort of a continuation of him pulling her up on the monument. They lived happily ever after!
Fun fact: Mel Brooks made a tv show satirizing the 60's spies genre, called Get Smart. The lawyer in this movie (Edward Platt) would play the 'Chief' of the good-guy spies. You should look up an episode or two 😂
And Hitchcock favorite Leo g. Carrol played Mr waverly, the boss on the James Bond parody show the man from uncle. North by north west was the home of lots of future spies
It's her leg razor. A few years earlier Eva Marie Saint had won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in _On the Waterfront,_ one of the greatest American films. _On the Waterfront_ won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Marlon Brando. It's one that should absolutely be on your list. Another Cary Grant crime/mystery/romance/thriller you should add to your list is _Charade_ (1963). Co-starring Audrey Hepburn and directed by Stanley Donen it has been called "the greatest Alfred Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made."
Dawn Marie hasn't watched "Charade"? I have "Charade" saved on my phone. The Henry Mancini "Charade" song doesn't get the superlative praise it deserves.
@@thomast8539well it could be a convenience item left in the rest room if the train compartment. Overnight trains would do that. If it is her's it could be a woman's safety razor, but women didn't really shave their pubes back then.
This movie contains one of the classic bloopers. During the scene in the Mt Rushmore cafe the take we see is take two. There's a little boy in the background who was scared of the gunshot noise after take one so when they went to shoot another take he puts his hands over his ears before the shot because he knew it was coming.
Thanks for another great reaction, Dawn Marie.❤ Imagine that Carry Crant was 55 in this movie. Eva Marie Saint was 35. Even in his 80s, Carry Grant looked very attractive and sexy. No wonder, after all, he was born in Bristol :) Tomorrow Jan.18 is his birthday anniversary. He would have been 120 years old. He really was one of a kind.
So glad you liked it! Your reaction was delightful. The title comes from Hamlet: “I am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is in the south, I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.” The $5 tip in those days would be about $50 today. Tiny women’s razors in those days were used for legs & armpits; pube shaving didn’t become popular until the late 1980s, except for the “bikini line.” Microfilm was a way of storing miniaturized photos of documents. Many libraries had multi-volume collections of periodicals on microfilm, and it featured prominently in spy movies. I see that someone has already mentioned the Vaudeville roots of “pay the two dollars.” ;)
One of my favorite Hitchcock films is “Notorious” (1946) which is suspenseful, romantic, witty, and brings in post-war politics and features a few scenes that developed a new device/technique for filming, similar to how they developed one for the vertigo scenes in “Vertigo.” It stars the iconic Cary Grant, the exquisite Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca) and extremely talented Claude Rains.
Given the star power of Cary Grant and his start in films was mainly in screwball comedies, Cary Grant usually ad libbed many of his own witty lines of dialog, especially if he had a problem with the script as written. The other actors and the director would simply play along with Grant because they trusted him. They understood how to keep him happy and that he often elevated the movie with whatever he came up with. Grant was almost like a second director towards the peak of his stardom.
One of my favorite actors of all time. When his daughter was born he walked away from Hollywood (age 62) to raise her, and never worked again. Another reason I admired him was this quote - "I'm opposed to actors taking sides in public and spouting spontaneously about love, religion or politics. We aren't experts on these subjects. Personally I'm a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to politics. My opinions are constantly changing. That's why I don't ever take a public stand on issues." -- Cary Grant
screwball comedies - not to mention Hitchcock movies- were tightly scripted affairs, that's total garbage what you're babbling. There was improv in Bringing Up Baby, that's the seed of your comment. Other than that, they didn't just turn the camera on and let Grant "riff" (which most actors didn't do back in the day , aywas). And definitely not in this movie or classic screwball comedies that he was in like "His Girl Friday" (one of the best scripts ever) or "The Awful Truth". Seeing that half of his movies are play adaptations, it's even more ridiculous. it's so hilarious how every movie reaction has some commenter claiming everything was "improv'd". If you knew anything about acting, you'd know that what's amazing is taking a script and dialog and making it seem natural and interesting. Movies are expensive affairs and they like to leave as little to chance as possible. Obviously if you have a Peter Sellers or have developed an improv style like Christopher Guest, you can factor in the improv "x" factor. But Cary Grant was an actor who memorized incredibly well-written lines and delivered them with style. A style, I might add, that Cary Grant didn't come up with as much as (director) Leo McCarey. It's so funny how people have this fantasy about actors "improv-ing" everything. You use improv when you don't have anything else. As a last resort.
"Imagine if he fell and died right at the end of the movie after everything that's happened." Yeah, that sure would be a crazy way for a director like Alfred Hitchcock to end one of his movies...for sure.
A massive influence on the James Bond movies. A well dressed man on a spy adventure, with travelogue aspects, and a beautiful woman, in thriller, suspense situations, with excellent music.
At 30:43, if you look in the background you can see an extra in the form of a little boy wearing a blue shirt. He puts his fingers in his ears before the woman fired that gun (he must've been psychic!).
In an interview, Hitchcock was asked something like, "North by Northwest is just fun, no symbolism right?" He said, "Yes, no symbolism.....Oh, one exception, the very last shot of the movie." Think about it.
"She" is Eva Marie Saint. She is a very good actress with +/- 75 years of acting to her name. She is 99 now and retired. The "Professor" is an actor Leo G. Caroll. I first remember seeing him in a weekly sitcom in the 50s called "Topper". He co-starred with an alcoholic St. Bernard ghost and two human ghosts. "What Happened!" The final scene was the classic "train into the tunnel" inuendo. I think they were very much alive at the end. BTW the crop dusting scene could have been shot just outside most houses from Texas to Canada in a 1000 o 2000 mile east-west strip called the great plains.
That was the most entertaining reaction I've ever seen. I love your plot guessing and hilarious motivation projections. You are a gem, Dawn, a true joy. Oh! and the tiny razor is probably part of the complimentary kit that comes with the compartment. Thanks for a great time!
Pay the two dollars is a reference to an old vaudeville routine where a guy is charged two dollars for a very minor infraction but refuses to pay and instead contests and appeals the fine. It builds and builds until it becomes catastrophic. Just pay the two dollars is the refrain
Mount Rushmore formally at the corner of Randolph St and Michigan Ave in downtown Chicago. They moved it to South Dakota when all the tourists started clogging up the intersection.
Mount Rushmore...near Rapid City South Dakota. We were there in June 2021 on a long trip out west. I was also once there as a child with my parents and little brother.
“I know what’s going on, but I *don’t* know what’s going on, and I’m loving it” - all-purpose reaction to every good Hitchcock movie. Also this is one of probably a dozen of his movies in which an innocent man on the run from both criminals and police is assisted by an attractive blonde.
This is the film that ended up with Cary Grant and James Mason being considered for James Bond, although Cary didn't want to commit to multiple films, so the rest is history!
As you can see the journey was North by NorthWest, from New York, to Chicago, to S. Dakota. A great trip, best by train or car. Airplane, you really miss out. Fun watching with you!
- The phrase ‘North by Northwest’ is supposed to sound like compass directions. But according to Hitchcock, there IS no actual compass direction: ‘North by Northwest.’ The idea was: you, the viewer, are primed to think there’s something there, even though there really isn’t. That kind of “chasing a ghost” is exactly what happens in the movie: Vandamm (and Roger Thornhill) are both trapped into pursuing a mysterious man named ‘George Kaplan,’ even though that person was completely made up, to trick Vandamm. (You also see the logo “Northwest” as indicating an airline, at the airport terminal.) -The chief enemy spy / antagonist ( Vandamm, played by James Mason) was standing next to the police (at the top of Mt. Rushmore), but was in police/Federal custody, when Leonard (Martin Landau) was shot by the police sergeant. - Roger Thornhill was pleading for Leonard to help him, because Leonard was the only other person nearby. Roger’s plea was irrational and one of desperation, because Leonard was there in the first place to kill both of them and to recover the microfilm, and there was no reason for him to suddenly change his mind. - There was ‘microfilm’ inside the belly of the small sculpture. Microfilm is similar to the strips of film used in 35 mm cameras, before cameras were digital. Except that more information was stored on microfilm. In public libraries, it was common and routine for old newspapers to be stored on microfilm and its close cousin, ‘microfiche.’ You asked the librarian to get the reels, installed them on the machine, and then wound them to the correct place, and could view the newspaper story or other documents on the projector-like viewing screen. - The entire plot of the movie started, because of a simple case of mistaken identity - but you have to be watching & listening very carefully to pick up on it: Roger Thornhill, by coincidence, raised his hand in the restaurant (to summon a waiter) at the exact moment that one of the staff called out for ‘George Kaplan.” The two leg breakers working for Vandamm saw and heard that, and went to the plausible-but-mistaken conclusion that Thornhill must be Kaplan. - Naw, they didn’t both die at the end. Hitchcock is weird, but he’s not THAT weird. (Besides, films made at that time were still under the Hays Code - which had the overall guidelines that in serious film stories, bad guys must be defeated and good guys must win.) - Because the future creators of the James Bond films (Broccoli and Saltzman) were heavily influenced by this film, and because the Bond films now are up to # 25, you can plausibly say that this film, ‘North by Northwest’ was so powerful that it inspired at least twenty-five ‘sequels’ over the next 65 years. …Not bad - not bad at all!
I get home from work and there's a video of Dawn Marie watching one of my favorite Hitchcock films. Since I can't experience this one for the first time again, it's fun to experience your first time watching it. Thanks for posting this.
"Pay the two dollars" was a recurring phrase in a comedy sketch where a man fights a ticket and makes things progressively worse for himself despite everyone advising him to "just pay the two dollars."
Hitchcock wanted Thornhill to hide in Lincoln's nose and get found out when he sneezed. One of the titles considered for this movie was _The Man in Lincoln's Nose._ I read that once, anyway.
Microfilm was, as its name suggests, a really small film used to take photos of documents while being 1/25th the size. The reason rich people back then did not have cameras everywhere was because cameras were still film only. This was long before digital cameras.
A train dining room had limited seating. People traveling alone would be seated together. In the 1950s women did not shave their pubes. That razor was for her legs. Those were professional criminals. They knew Townsend was out of town for a while, so they just took over his house for a day. Microfilm is very small photographic film. A roll of it can hold pictures of many documents and be hidden to easily smuggle. It was used a lot in espionage before digital cameras. At the end of the movie VanDamm had been arrested. They were holding him there while they rescued our heroes.
The title North by Northwest is a subject of debate. Many have seen it as having been taken from a line ("I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw") in Hamlet, a work also concerned with the shifty nature of reality.
Hello, Roger Thornhill was trying to pull Miss Eve Kindle up from falling of the Mount Rushmore. To encourage and coax her he said to Eve " Come along Mrs. Thornhill. " Thus, proposing marriage to her. It renewed her energy. After the ordeal was over the new Couple were in their pajamas and Roger in the train bunk bed called down to Mrs. Thornhill " Come along Mrs. Thornhill. " . The End " Hey! "
The heads on Mt Rushmore are approximately 60 ft (18 meters) high and are an imposing sight. Hitchcock was not allowed to film/climb on the actual monument, so duplicates were built on a stage set.
What most viewers are not aware of is that 2 great British actors are being watched and commented on under the direction of one of the greatest directors of the film age (also a Brit), here by an obviously British woman...
Mr. and Mrs. Thornhill were quite alive at the end of the film and a train going into a tunnel traditionally symbolizes their physically consumating the marriage. I am glad you have seen this movie, it is one I have always enjoyed.
According to the making of documentary on the blu-ray, Hitchcock was not allowed to film outside the United Nations building, so they had a camera in a van I think and had Carry Grant turn up in the tax and they filmed it on the fly, those two (and all the people of course) guards on the top of the steps are real guards and were unaware filing was going on. When Eva Marie Saint's character says on the train says "I never discuss Love on an empty stomach" it was actually filmed and you can see if you look hard; that she said "I never make Love on an empty stomach" but it was dubbed over as it was a bit too suggestive for the time period etc.
Microfilm is essentially like a photograph. Take an old camera and make a picture of a written page. And now shrink the text, so that a small dot the size of a millimetre has several pages in it. Back before there were computers this was how spies were able to smuggle lots of stolen information. You could hide them on top of regular dots in a normal book, inside a watch and in so many places that it's extremely difficult to find them. But microfilm wasn't restricted to the dot. A microfilm the size of a normal sheet of paper could hold an entire book. In the past some libraries made copies of their books to be stored elsewhere or to save to books from the wear of being read, especially rare books. Vandamm had his entire operation on microfilm, something the agents didn't know. All they were sure of was that he had it written down somewhere and would take it with him. So she was supposed to get that information so they could take out his entire organization. After Thornhill heard that they were using microfilm this was no longer necessary as they knew what they were looking for. Microfilm is not impossible to find, just very difficult in some cases, but first you need to know what you are looking for.
You can also see James Mason (Van Damme) in the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. It also stars Peter Lorre (Casablanca) and Kirk Douglas (father of Michael Douglas).
Songwriter Sammy Cahn proactively wrote a song for the movie and pitched it to Alfred Hitchcock, who turned it down. It was a love theme called "The Man on Lincoln's Nose." I'm not kidding.
North by northwest is "roughly" the direction of travel Thorndyke goes in: starting at NYC and ending up at Mount Rushmore in the black hills of Dakota...
In this movie there are 3 actors who later acted in spy related TV shows. Thornhill's lawyer later played the Chief in the American TV series Get Smart. One of henchmen, Martin Landau, played in the American TV series Mission Impossible. The man who was in charge of the American spies, Leo G. Carroll played the head U.N.C.L.E. of the Man from UNCLE series.
Fun fact. In the scene where Eva shoots Cary Grant, if you watch the little boy in the background, siting at the table, he puts his hands over his ears before Eva shoots. The boy was an extra and he knew the shot was coming. 30:43 They never caught it in post production, so the mistake made it into the film. 🤣 Always makes me laugh.
The item contained in the statuette was microfilm. Film that has been compressed into microscopic form obviously containing important government classified information.
The statuette contained microfilm, which was what secret information was stored on before we had computers and thumb drives. Text, pictures, mechanical plans, etc. could all be stored on microfilm.
When Thornhill meets the real Townsend, he mentions that the house is shut up except for the gardener and his wife. When Thornhill and his Mom, etc leave the house, the camera shows a gardener who is one of the 2 men from the original kidnapping, also in the elevator and more and threw the knife into the real Townsend. So he and his wife (the housekeeper who held Thornhill up with the gun) worked for Van Damm. It is mentioned that it is during the “Cold War” so the assumption is that Van Damm worked for the Russians. Microfilm was a common technique used in those times; plans or maps or documents or chemical formulas, etc could be photographed and then miniaturized into very tiny bits and smuggled inside almost anything.
A telegraph was the first long-distance way to communicate instantly. It came before the telephone, household electricity, and radio. Basically, you'd transmit a signal through wires (strung up like electric cable on poles overhead, just like now). The signal was made by a little machine that clicked every time you pushed it down. You could make long or short clicks which represented letters in the alphabet. This technology is almost 200 years old, btw. It became obsolete once the internet really got rolling.
DECADES AGO (~1970s) there was this "learn english" programme on german TV ... and they had a series of sketches around "advertising a soft drink called FIASCO" ... punting on an english river and the guy falls in, pouring the drink into a paper cup and the bottom falls out to make the drink pour onto his trousters ... and the slogan was: *_"THINGS HAPPEN ... to people who drink FIASCO"_* ... and every time someons says "things happen" ... I think "she drinks FIASCO!"
That part of South Dakota is where my family is from. The cafe at the faces is real. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but is not used as a cafe any more. The Rapid Johnson hotel is also real. One of the grand old ladies as landmark hotels go.
North by northwest is roughly the direction he traveled from the beginning of the movie to the end, from New York City to Mount Rushmore. Speaking of Mount Rushmore, that scene in the restaurant where he was shot, it took several takes to get it right. The people knew what was coming, and if you watch it closely enough there is a kid in that restaurant covering his ears in anticipation of the noise.
![ผัวเถื่อน - ยูริ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/P08ORRVDGl8/mqdefault.jpg)
The train entering the tunnel at the end, as Mr and Mrs Thornhill settle into their sleeping quarters is a classic moment.
Super Freudian. :D
She has a nice railway tunnel, I'm sure. AND she keeps the shrubbery trimmed away. Nice.
Gotta love Hollywood's ways of working around the Breen office!
@@JPSE57 Actually HItchcock's way. He planned that little bit of naughtiness.
Yah. And dead people don't have sex. So, they survived to make more thornhills.
If you like Eva Marie Saint, see, "On the Waterfront." She is literally a glowing light of goodness in a really ugly landscape.
Great suggestion! Dawn would definitely enjoy "On the Waterfront."
Eva turns 100 years young this July. She is the oldest Academy Award winner. God willing, she will see 100 this summer!
And then read Simone De Beauvoir?
.....yup, Eva with young Marlon Brando.....a no-brainer, total essential classic!
@@drowner1 In her American circumstance?
Dawn, you missed the set-up. That is the reason you were confused. In the very beginning, in the restaurant, Roger Thornhill said to the gentlemen that he was meeting with that he wanted to send a telegram, so he called for the restaurant employee. That restaurant employee was paging George Caplan. The men that abducted Roger saw his call for the restaurant employee while the employee was calling for Caplan, so assumed Roger was answering the page - meaning that Roger was Caplan. It was a mistaken identity situation.
You really need to pay close attention to what is going on at the beginning of a Hitchcock film. He often does the set-up for the movie in the first few minutes and quite often it is very quick.
I've always thought Hitchcock underplayed that moment a tiny bit too much. Most viewers seem to miss it on the first viewing.
Agreed, this is often missed. I bought a copy about 10 years ago just to analyze all the stuff I missed over the years. It also highlights those goons are bumbling idiots, they nabbed someone with nothing to go on. I guess we could wonder if they were getting desperate. Perhaps Van Damm threatened them to get the spy. Even more interesting, some agent(s) had to set up all those hotels, how they didn't get caught I don't know.
I hope Dawn rewatches this on her own. The point of first time watchings is to engage with us, the audience, but she loved it so much I'm sure she'll see it again soon. Some reacting channels poopoo a movie they don't understand because they missed a key point.
You should rewatch the bar scene in the beginning as it will make a lot more sense. And you’ll love it even more.
I missed the public announcement for Kaplan for more than the first viewing.
A bit odd to be smacking my forehead about a movie I had seen several times, but finally caught why the misidentification happened.
I have seen this movie dozens of times. Not to over-analyze, but I agree most reactors miss the set-up....but, the mistaken identity storyline is established again and again in the following scenes. The happy accident of it all is revealed later and almost impossible to figure out ahead of time, of course.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST inspired the making of James Bond movies a lot. Alfred Hitchcock was asked to direct the first 007 but declined (he wanted to go independent). Cary Grant was on the shortlist for playing James Bond, but he only wanted to do one movie, and the James Bond people wanted a serial.
There are many many elements of this film that rolled into the Bond films - agreed.
Can you tell me a source on the Internet where I could find this information?
And this movie itself is a reworking of an earlier Hitchcock classic British movie ‘The 39 Steps’ quite significantly so.
@@ShinySilvery If that was in Lehman's mind.
The 39 Steps (1935) > Saboteur (1942) > North by Northwest (1959) are all essentially the same film. Hitchcock was fascinated by/ obsessed with the idea of an innocent everyman who, through no fault of his own, stumbles upon a deadly conspiracy and is wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit. The basic pattern of these films involves a cross-country chase as the protagonist attempts to unmask and foil the conspirators and prove his own innocence. He is aided by a (usually initially reluctant but ultimately sympathetic and ) female stranger, and undergoes a series of dangerous and suspenseful close calls along the way. Other Hitchcock trademarks include a finely honed script with moments of witty banter and sly double-entendres, and a cultured, urbane master villain.
I'm glad you liked Bernard Herrmann's music! He scored 8 Hitchcock films in a row, including "Vertigo" and "Psycho".
Great music score for "Marnie" too.
9:55 "Pay the two dollars". A reference to an old vaudeville routine about a guy cited for a trivial offense with a $2 fine, like littering, but his self-important attorney won't let it go, costing the poor guy more suffering at each turn. Like telling someone, "Just deal with it."
Love the design and costuming of this picture, with New York City of 1959, so old, yet curiously modern. Love the trains and Grand Central Station. A reminder that you could get along without mobile phones back then, because there were public phones spaced a few hundred meters apart everywhere, and they worked just fine.
Ahh! thanks for explaining that. I always thought when seeing this film... there's no way drunk driving only cost $2!!
@@drg3712Yes, one imagines. I looked it up. The original routine appears in the movie Ziegfeld Follies of 1945, with Victor Moore and Edward Arnold. It was as familiar to audiences in 1959 as jokes like Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch" are now.
Always laugh about the fine, drunk driver hits a police car $2.00 ,s.
@@drg3712 You got that right,I always laugh at the fine.
Believe it or not, Eva Marie Saint, one of the most beautiful actresses of all time is still alive. She turned 99 on July 4, 2023. She's truly one of the last of the Golden Age of Hollywood!
PS: Dawn, you think too much! About the end, he was just pulling her up to the bed, sort of a continuation of him pulling her up on the monument. They lived happily ever after!
Happy 100 th birthday !🎂 Ms. Saint
Fun fact: Mel Brooks made a tv show satirizing the 60's spies genre, called Get Smart. The lawyer in this movie (Edward Platt) would play the 'Chief' of the good-guy spies. You should look up an episode or two 😂
Don’t forget Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety movie once you’ve also watched The Birds and Psycho, parody of Hitchcock films altogether.
Martin landau would go on the star in another spy show called “mission impossible”
@@RossM3838and Space 1999
@@MarkMcLTand don't forget Leo G Carroll as Mr Waverly in the Man from U.N.C.L.E.
And Hitchcock favorite Leo g. Carrol played Mr waverly, the boss on the James Bond parody show the man from uncle. North by north west was the home of lots of future spies
It's her leg razor.
A few years earlier Eva Marie Saint had won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in _On the Waterfront,_ one of the greatest American films. _On the Waterfront_ won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Marlon Brando. It's one that should absolutely be on your list.
Another Cary Grant crime/mystery/romance/thriller you should add to your list is _Charade_ (1963). Co-starring Audrey Hepburn and directed by Stanley Donen it has been called "the greatest Alfred Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made."
OK, you just keep telling yourself that. Much too small for a leg razor.
Dawn Marie hasn't watched "Charade"?
I have "Charade" saved on my phone.
The Henry Mancini "Charade" song doesn't get the superlative praise it deserves.
@@thomast8539well it could be a convenience item left in the rest room if the train compartment. Overnight trains would do that. If it is her's it could be a woman's safety razor, but women didn't really shave their pubes back then.
This movie contains one of the classic bloopers. During the scene in the Mt Rushmore cafe the take we see is take two. There's a little boy in the background who was scared of the gunshot noise after take one so when they went to shoot another take he puts his hands over his ears before the shot because he knew it was coming.
The most adorable gaff EVER. LOL!
I've never looked out for that before, I will in future! 🤭
Thanks for another great reaction, Dawn Marie.❤
Imagine that Carry Crant was 55 in this movie. Eva Marie Saint was 35.
Even in his 80s, Carry Grant looked very attractive and sexy. No wonder, after all, he was born in Bristol :) Tomorrow Jan.18 is his birthday anniversary.
He would have been 120 years old.
He really was one of a kind.
"They poured a whole bottle of Bourbon in to me! No, they didn't give me a chaser!" Funny as f**k! 🤣
So glad you liked it! Your reaction was delightful.
The title comes from Hamlet: “I am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is in the south, I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.”
The $5 tip in those days would be about $50 today.
Tiny women’s razors in those days were used for legs & armpits; pube shaving didn’t become popular until the late 1980s, except for the “bikini line.”
Microfilm was a way of storing miniaturized photos of documents. Many libraries had multi-volume collections of periodicals on microfilm, and it featured prominently in spy movies.
I see that someone has already mentioned the Vaudeville roots of “pay the two dollars.” ;)
Or, for the more literal-minded, look at the sign in the background at 29:13. He flew north (to Mt. Rushmore) by Northwest Airlines.
When at the airport, the plane flew north, the airline was called ‘Northwest’ so the last journey was ‘North, by Northwest’.
Except Rapid City SD is more WNW of Chicago...
"Psycho", "The Birds" and "Dial M for Murder" are all excellent choices!
I would prefer "To Catch a Thief" and even "The 39 Steps" ...
There's also Rebecca (1940).
Strangers On A Train 1951. Wonderful reaction, as always.
I went to Mt. Rushmore for the first time this year.
Yes, it's that cool. Even cooler in person.
One of my favorite Hitchcock films is “Notorious” (1946) which is suspenseful, romantic, witty, and brings in post-war politics and features a few scenes that developed a new device/technique for filming, similar to how they developed one for the vertigo scenes in “Vertigo.” It stars the iconic Cary Grant, the exquisite Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca) and extremely talented Claude Rains.
I rank it as Hitch's second best picture, just behind, Rear Window.
Dawn Marie, Hitchcock's favorite film that he directed was "Shadow of a Doubt". It's worth checking out. Thanks for your reaction.
One of my favorite Hitchcock movies. It was made even better by getting to rewatch it with Dawn Marie.
Given the star power of Cary Grant and his start in films was mainly in screwball comedies, Cary Grant usually ad libbed many of his own witty lines of dialog, especially if he had a problem with the script as written. The other actors and the director would simply play along with Grant because they trusted him. They understood how to keep him happy and that he often elevated the movie with whatever he came up with. Grant was almost like a second director towards the peak of his stardom.
One of my favorite actors of all time.
When his daughter was born he walked away from Hollywood (age 62) to raise her, and never worked again.
Another reason I admired him was this quote -
"I'm opposed to actors taking sides in public and spouting spontaneously about love, religion or politics. We aren't experts on these subjects. Personally I'm a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to politics. My opinions are constantly changing. That's why I don't ever take a public stand on issues."
-- Cary Grant
screwball comedies - not to mention Hitchcock movies- were tightly scripted affairs, that's total garbage what you're babbling. There was improv in Bringing Up Baby, that's the seed of your comment. Other than that, they didn't just turn the camera on and let Grant "riff" (which most actors didn't do back in the day , aywas). And definitely not in this movie or classic screwball comedies that he was in like "His Girl Friday" (one of the best scripts ever) or "The Awful Truth". Seeing that half of his movies are play adaptations, it's even more ridiculous. it's so hilarious how every movie reaction has some commenter claiming everything was "improv'd". If you knew anything about acting, you'd know that what's amazing is taking a script and dialog and making it seem natural and interesting. Movies are expensive affairs and they like to leave as little to chance as possible. Obviously if you have a Peter Sellers or have developed an improv style like Christopher Guest, you can factor in the improv "x" factor. But Cary Grant was an actor who memorized incredibly well-written lines and delivered them with style. A style, I might add, that Cary Grant didn't come up with as much as (director) Leo McCarey. It's so funny how people have this fantasy about actors "improv-ing" everything. You use improv when you don't have anything else. As a last resort.
Dawn clearly needs to watch this a few more times. :)
"Imagine if he fell and died right at the end of the movie after everything that's happened."
Yeah, that sure would be a crazy way for a director like Alfred Hitchcock to end one of his movies...for sure.
Exactly...! They're in heaven. Well done.
A massive influence on the James Bond movies. A well dressed man on a spy adventure, with travelogue aspects, and a beautiful woman, in thriller, suspense situations, with excellent music.
At 30:43, if you look in the background you can see an extra in the form of a little boy wearing a blue shirt. He puts his fingers in his ears before the woman fired that gun (he must've been psychic!).
I'm so glad that I managed to see Mount Rushmore whilst I had a fortnight-long touring holiday in the United States back in 2011.
Great reaction and you have awakened in me my desire to see these old classics again.
Please react to 1955 "To catch a thief" another Hitchcock movie. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are absolutely epic !
In an interview, Hitchcock was asked something like, "North by Northwest is just fun, no symbolism right?" He said, "Yes, no symbolism.....Oh, one exception, the very last shot of the movie." Think about it.
"She" is Eva Marie Saint. She is a very good actress with +/- 75 years of acting to her name. She is 99 now and retired. The "Professor" is an actor Leo G. Caroll. I first remember seeing him in a weekly sitcom in the 50s called "Topper". He co-starred with an alcoholic St. Bernard ghost and two human ghosts. "What Happened!" The final scene was the classic "train into the tunnel" inuendo. I think they were very much alive at the end.
BTW the crop dusting scene could have been shot just outside most houses from Texas to Canada in a 1000 o 2000 mile east-west strip called the great plains.
Leo G Carroll later starred as Alexander Waverly in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
True. I just liked Topper a lot.@@paulhazell4386
You really should watch "Rebecca" it's amazing :)
dawn, at the very end they showed a train going into a tunnel, in movies, that is a euphamism for putting a p____ into a p_____
That was the most entertaining reaction I've ever seen. I love your plot guessing and hilarious motivation projections. You are a gem, Dawn, a true joy. Oh! and the tiny razor is probably part of the complimentary kit that comes with the compartment. Thanks for a great time!
Sometimes it takes more than one viewing of a film to "get the plot" of the movie.
This is one of them.
Pay the two dollars is a reference to an old vaudeville routine where a guy is charged two dollars for a very minor infraction but refuses to pay and instead contests and appeals the fine. It builds and builds until it becomes catastrophic. Just pay the two dollars is the refrain
Yes, they were in Chicago and that scene with the crop duster was in the country side of Illinois outside Chicago.
Eva Marie Saint was born in 1924. And she's still alive in 2024. She turns 100 in July.
Mount Rushmore formally at the corner of Randolph St and Michigan Ave in downtown Chicago. They moved it to South Dakota when all the tourists started clogging up the intersection.
Mount Rushmore...near Rapid City South Dakota. We were there in June 2021 on a long trip out west. I was also once there as a child with my parents and little brother.
Massive props to the top notch detail provided by your subs in the comments section. I’ve learned so much.
"Go on Lincoln's nose", brilliant! Lol.
“I know what’s going on, but I *don’t* know what’s going on, and I’m loving it” - all-purpose reaction to every good Hitchcock movie.
Also this is one of probably a dozen of his movies in which an innocent man on the run from both criminals and police is assisted by an attractive blonde.
Lost count of the times my wife and I have watched this. Has always been our favourite film.
This is the film that ended up with Cary Grant and James Mason being considered for James Bond, although Cary didn't want to commit to multiple films, so the rest is history!
Love you , Dawn, and these classic movies.
"You need cameras microphones and oh dogs, DAAAWGS!!!" LMFAO 😆😂🤣😆😂🤣 BRILLIANT ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT, DAWN I LOVE YOU, YOU SLAY ME!!!!!!!
As you can see the journey was North by NorthWest, from New York, to Chicago, to S. Dakota. A great trip, best by train or car. Airplane, you really miss out. Fun watching with you!
I almost hurt myself clicking on this when I saw it. Love you and love this movie! Keep it up! You continue to rock!
- The phrase ‘North by Northwest’ is supposed to sound like compass directions. But according to Hitchcock, there IS no actual compass direction: ‘North by Northwest.’ The idea was: you, the viewer, are primed to think there’s something there, even though there really isn’t. That kind of “chasing a ghost” is exactly what happens in the movie: Vandamm (and Roger Thornhill) are both trapped into pursuing a mysterious man named ‘George Kaplan,’ even though that person was completely made up, to trick Vandamm. (You also see the logo “Northwest” as indicating an airline, at the airport terminal.)
-The chief enemy spy / antagonist ( Vandamm, played by James Mason) was standing next to the police (at the top of Mt. Rushmore), but was in police/Federal custody, when Leonard (Martin Landau) was shot by the police sergeant.
- Roger Thornhill was pleading for Leonard to help him, because Leonard was the only other person nearby. Roger’s plea was irrational and one of desperation, because Leonard was there in the first place to kill both of them and to recover the microfilm, and there was no reason for him to suddenly change his mind.
- There was ‘microfilm’ inside the belly of the small sculpture. Microfilm is similar to the strips of film used in 35 mm cameras, before cameras were digital. Except that more information was stored on microfilm. In public libraries, it was common and routine for old newspapers to be stored on microfilm and its close cousin, ‘microfiche.’ You asked the librarian to get the reels, installed them on the machine, and then wound them to the correct place, and could view the newspaper story or other documents on the projector-like viewing screen.
- The entire plot of the movie started, because of a simple case of mistaken identity - but you have to be watching & listening very carefully to pick up on it: Roger Thornhill, by coincidence, raised his hand in the restaurant (to summon a waiter) at the exact moment that one of the staff called out for ‘George Kaplan.” The two leg breakers working for Vandamm saw and heard that, and went to the plausible-but-mistaken conclusion that Thornhill must be Kaplan.
- Naw, they didn’t both die at the end. Hitchcock is weird, but he’s not THAT weird. (Besides, films made at that time were still under the Hays Code - which had the overall guidelines that in serious film stories, bad guys must be defeated and good guys must win.)
- Because the future creators of the James Bond films (Broccoli and Saltzman) were heavily influenced by this film, and because the Bond films now are up to # 25, you can plausibly say that this film, ‘North by Northwest’ was so powerful that it inspired at least twenty-five ‘sequels’ over the next 65 years. …Not bad - not bad at all!
I get home from work and there's a video of Dawn Marie watching one of my favorite Hitchcock films. Since I can't experience this one for the first time again, it's fun to experience your first time watching it. Thanks for posting this.
"Pay the two dollars" was a recurring phrase in a comedy sketch where a man fights a ticket and makes things progressively worse for himself despite everyone advising him to "just pay the two dollars."
They died? Nah - that train going into the tunnel is a celebration of Life
“ I thought it was the end of the town.” Oh dawn. I love you!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Hitchcock wanted Thornhill to hide in Lincoln's nose and get found out when he sneezed. One of the titles considered for this movie was _The Man in Lincoln's Nose._ I read that once, anyway.
Microfilm was, as its name suggests, a really small film used to take photos of documents while being 1/25th the size. The reason rich people back then did not have cameras everywhere was because cameras were still film only. This was long before digital cameras.
And TV cameras of the time were the size of large boxes, filled with tubes and wiring. The transistor was just a theory at the time...
A train dining room had limited seating. People traveling alone would be seated together.
In the 1950s women did not shave their pubes. That razor was for her legs.
Those were professional criminals. They knew Townsend was out of town for a while, so they just took over his house for a day.
Microfilm is very small photographic film. A roll of it can hold pictures of many documents and be hidden to easily smuggle. It was used a lot in espionage before digital cameras.
At the end of the movie VanDamm had been arrested. They were holding him there while they rescued our heroes.
Many consider Cary Grant the first James Bond because of his performance in this movie.
"Pay the two dollars" is the punchline to an old joke. She's essentially telling him to quit while he's ahead.
North of Northwest is actually a Shakespeare reference.
A Telegram is like an email but before computers but sent from a Post Office to a Post Office then a man delivers it to the end recipient.
The title North by Northwest is a subject of debate. Many have seen it as having been taken from a line ("I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw") in Hamlet, a work also concerned with the shifty nature of reality.
Hello, Roger Thornhill was trying to pull Miss Eve Kindle up from falling of the Mount Rushmore. To encourage and coax her he said to Eve " Come along Mrs. Thornhill. " Thus, proposing marriage to her. It renewed her energy. After the ordeal was over the new Couple were in their pajamas and Roger in the train bunk bed called down to Mrs. Thornhill " Come along Mrs. Thornhill. " . The End " Hey! "
"I would never. That is where you find aliens!" 😅😅😅
The heads on Mt Rushmore are approximately 60 ft (18 meters) high and are an imposing sight.
Hitchcock was not allowed to film/climb on the actual monument, so duplicates were built on a stage set.
What most viewers are not aware of is that 2 great British actors are being watched and commented on under the direction of one of the greatest directors of the film age (also a Brit), here by an obviously British woman...
"He saw a pretty face and then he was just Play-Doh." Dawn, you're the best.
Mr. and Mrs. Thornhill were quite alive at the end of the film and a train going into a tunnel traditionally symbolizes their physically consumating the marriage.
I am glad you have seen this movie, it is one I have always enjoyed.
According to the making of documentary on the blu-ray, Hitchcock was not allowed to film outside the United Nations building, so they had a camera in a van I think and had Carry Grant turn up in the tax and they filmed it on the fly, those two (and all the people of course) guards on the top of the steps are real guards and were unaware filing was going on.
When Eva Marie Saint's character says on the train says "I never discuss Love on an empty stomach" it was actually filmed and you can see if you look hard; that she said "I never make Love on an empty stomach" but it was dubbed over as it was a bit too suggestive for the time period etc.
The lead actress is Eva Marie Saint. She's still with us and will turn 100 years old on July 4, 2024.
Microfilm is essentially like a photograph. Take an old camera and make a picture of a written page. And now shrink the text, so that a small dot the size of a millimetre has several pages in it. Back before there were computers this was how spies were able to smuggle lots of stolen information. You could hide them on top of regular dots in a normal book, inside a watch and in so many places that it's extremely difficult to find them.
But microfilm wasn't restricted to the dot. A microfilm the size of a normal sheet of paper could hold an entire book. In the past some libraries made copies of their books to be stored elsewhere or to save to books from the wear of being read, especially rare books.
Vandamm had his entire operation on microfilm, something the agents didn't know. All they were sure of was that he had it written down somewhere and would take it with him. So she was supposed to get that information so they could take out his entire organization. After Thornhill heard that they were using microfilm this was no longer necessary as they knew what they were looking for. Microfilm is not impossible to find, just very difficult in some cases, but first you need to know what you are looking for.
You can also see James Mason (Van Damme) in the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. It also stars Peter Lorre (Casablanca) and Kirk Douglas (father of Michael Douglas).
36:58 - "You need to have security cameras everywhere in the house" ...What, in 1958? 🤣🤣🤣
Songwriter Sammy Cahn proactively wrote a song for the movie and pitched it to Alfred Hitchcock, who turned it down. It was a love theme called "The Man on Lincoln's Nose." I'm not kidding.
The henchman Leonard was played by Martin Landau, who later won an Oscar playing Bela Lugosi in "ED WOOD".
And was a regular in the '60s spy series "Mission Impossible".
@@creech54 And "Space: 1999".
North by northwest is "roughly" the direction of travel Thorndyke goes in: starting at NYC and ending up at Mount Rushmore in the black hills of Dakota...
In this movie there are 3 actors who later acted in spy related TV shows. Thornhill's lawyer later played the Chief in the American TV series Get Smart. One of henchmen, Martin Landau, played in the American TV series Mission Impossible. The man who was in charge of the American spies, Leo G. Carroll played the head U.N.C.L.E. of the Man from UNCLE series.
Fun fact. In the scene where Eva shoots Cary Grant, if you watch the little boy in the background, siting at the table, he puts his hands over his ears before Eva shoots. The boy was an extra and he knew the shot was coming. 30:43 They never caught it in post production, so the mistake made it into the film. 🤣 Always makes me laugh.
Great movie, and my kids love it, and they are only teenagers and 9! The crop-dusting scene was very ahead of its time, effects-wise.
When the train goes in the tunnel at the end, that was Hitchcock's way of saying they were boning.
The item contained in the statuette was microfilm. Film that has been compressed into microscopic form obviously containing important government classified information.
You've never been to a diner car on a train. They always fill the tables up because seating is limited on a train, it's not like a restaurant.
When you ride a train and you go to eat. You are seated wherever there's an empty place to sit.
Railroads used to provide their customers who bought a “room” with a small bag of toiletries, mostly mini sized. A mini razor was a common item.
Great Reaction 👍👍👍
"That wasn't very sporting, using real bullets" is maybe my favorite line in this (referring back to the shooting of Thornhill with blanks).
Yay! Classy... Excellent picks! Thanks, Dawn Marie...!
want to see a blooper they left in? When she fake shoots him, before she takes out the gun, a young boy in the background plugs his ears.
The statuette contained microfilm, which was what secret information was stored on before we had computers and thumb drives. Text, pictures, mechanical plans, etc. could all be stored on microfilm.
When Thornhill meets the real Townsend, he mentions that the house is shut up except for the gardener and his wife. When Thornhill and his Mom, etc leave the house, the camera shows a gardener who is one of the 2 men from the original kidnapping, also in the elevator and more and threw the knife into the real Townsend. So he and his wife (the housekeeper who held Thornhill up with the gun) worked for Van Damm.
It is mentioned that it is during the “Cold War” so the assumption is that Van Damm worked for the Russians. Microfilm was a common technique used in those times; plans or maps or documents or chemical formulas, etc could be photographed and then miniaturized into very tiny bits and smuggled inside almost anything.
Micro film, which is exactly what it sounds like - photos shrunk to the size of a full stop.
In the end, Van Dam was with the Police, because they just captured him.
Fun fact: Eva Marie Saint--- the only surviving lead cast member of this classic--- is the oldest living Oscar winner (at 99).
I'm too happy Dawn. Once again you made my day!
A telegraph was the first long-distance way to communicate instantly. It came before the telephone, household electricity, and radio. Basically, you'd transmit a signal through wires (strung up like electric cable on poles overhead, just like now). The signal was made by a little machine that clicked every time you pushed it down. You could make long or short clicks which represented letters in the alphabet.
This technology is almost 200 years old, btw. It became obsolete once the internet really got rolling.
Love this film, one of my all-time favourites.
DECADES AGO (~1970s) there was this "learn english" programme on german TV ... and they had a series of sketches around "advertising a soft drink called FIASCO" ... punting on an english river and the guy falls in, pouring the drink into a paper cup and the bottom falls out to make the drink pour onto his trousters ... and the slogan was:
*_"THINGS HAPPEN ... to people who drink FIASCO"_* ... and every time someons says "things happen" ... I think "she drinks FIASCO!"
That part of South Dakota is where my family is from. The cafe at the faces is real. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but is not used as a cafe any more. The Rapid Johnson hotel is also real. One of the grand old ladies as landmark hotels go.
North by northwest is roughly the direction he traveled from the beginning of the movie to the end, from New York City to Mount Rushmore. Speaking of Mount Rushmore, that scene in the restaurant where he was shot, it took several takes to get it right. The people knew what was coming, and if you watch it closely enough there is a kid in that restaurant covering his ears in anticipation of the noise.
The kid in the blue shirt to the right in the background just a bit before Kendall shoots Thornhill.
The style was very posh and beautiful in 1959, but hair styles were short.