No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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31 July

No hawks or hand-saws : Re-visiting North by Northwest (1959)

When Valerian (Adam Williams) and Licht (Robert Ellenstein) spot Roger O. Thornhill leave The Plaza's Oak Room*, they immediately decide (seemingly for no better reason than that Kaplan's name has just been paged as Thornhill rose to go to make the call) that he is Kaplan.#NxNW

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

* To make a dutiful reminder to his mother about the theatre that night :

Maybe not untypical of mother / son relationships in other films that star Cary Grant, but Thornhill's attitudes towards marriage / divorce and women seem shaped by that with his (Jessie Royce Landis) ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 9, 2020

Jessie Royce Landis (as Clara Thornhill, Roger O. Thornhill's mother¹)

[...]

However, what we learn of Eve Kendall (if gender-assumptions misdirected us) causes N x NW to unfold into the jealousies of Devlin (Grant, again) for Alicia Huberman (Bergman, again) in Notorious (1946), in the dual role that she played towards Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2020

“I think the Academy ought to set aside a special award for Bergman every year whether she makes a picture or not!” - Cary Grant about Ingrid Bergman at the 1947 Academy Awards pic.twitter.com/WtivqvzQFC

— ingrid bergman source (@ingridbsource) July 18, 2020

[...]

¹ The spell-binding (versus The House of Dr Edwardes, the novel from which Ben Hecht, etc., worked (away)) is additionally of all of :

* Ballantyne, believing what Leo Carroll (Dr Murchison) wants

* Dr Alex Brülov (Michael Chekhov), desiring his old pupil

* We cinema-goers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2020

End-notes :

¹ Though only a year separated Grant and her in age.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)