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)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

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)

Report from Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival 2016 : Notorious (1946) at Averys Wine Cellars

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 July

Who else was at @averyswine, on Friday, for a night of flowing wine, suspenseful style, with Cary, Claude and Ingrid at @carycomeshome... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2016

This posting will accrete into some sort of collage account of 'A Grand Day Out' in Averys Wine Cellars, Bristol, for the launch event of Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival 2016, with a special screening - with wine interludes, and cheese and bubbly preludes - of Notorious (1946)

* Any poetic justice to poison Alicia, in part, with uranium ore in her black coffee ?

* Alexander Sebastian / Mme S. - born 3.5 yrs apart

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 9, 2016

Attending this event had only been proposed and then booked, on the day, on a train to Bristol Parkway, as a much-delayed birth treat for The Agent's maternal...

STOP PRESS : From the archive (posting in progress) : Ma Apsley deputizes at inaugural Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival

* Resemblance of Dolores Umbridge (IS) to Mme. Sebastian (LK) ?

* Hitchcock plays with epistemology : who knows what - and how's it known ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 9, 2016

When Cary checks his e-mail / voicemail - or gets that text-message ? - we already know the bad news for Ingrid and him...

From Blackmail (1929) to Dial M for Murder (1954), when there's a phone-call, there's...https://t.co/7bwsLx7bAahttps://t.co/AwOVkSApSe

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 9, 2016

Andrea Riseborough as Colette McVeigh in Shadow Dancer (2012)

Or, @carycomeshome, one was reminded of a very pale imitation in Shadow Dancer (2012) (who is controlling whom ?) :https://t.co/oVT79m2MEX

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 9, 2016

Great start to the Gary Grant festival! #film + #wine = fun! Next screening is Bottleshock 5th August pic.twitter.com/zESj6SipNf

— AverysCellars (@AverysCellars) July 11, 2016

To come, in the Festival itself, on 16 and 17 July :

For @carycomeshome on Sunday, re-united in An Affair to Remember (1957) :https://t.co/axfmiwZ1nm@Everymancinema Whiteladies Rd BS8 2NT

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 11, 2016

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