North by Northwest

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Ernest Lehman
Release Date: 22 November 1959 (UK)
6 August 1959 (New York USA)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller, Mystery.

• The first aerial shot encapsulates the whole desert in one shot, this is Hitchcock's way of conveying Cary Grants vulnerability as he is a tiny speck amongst a vast baron space. The emptiness of the desert also impluies that he has nowhere to hide and there could be danger ahead.


• The diegetic sounds of the cars go from relatively quiet to very loud showing the distance between them and the character which relaly puts the spectator into his perspective.


• Cary Grants costume implies that he is lost or in a place that he is not comfortable with. A suit in the middle of the desert....


• The editing cuts between shots of Cary Grant's reaction and the first person perspective shots shows his confusement and bewilderment. Hitchcok also seems to make a pattern of it, flicking from one shot to another for the same amount of time each time. I think that this showed how the character was looking around quite desperately 'clutching at straws' to find something or someone around him. This again enforces the idea of vulnerability thus raising tension amongst the spectators.


• Hitchcock also uses an anti-climax as the two characters meet. As a spectator we begin to become used to cars coming down the long road so when a car comes from a different direction we automatically become wary. As the man comes out of the car the tension is further raised especially as Cary Grant strolls across the road, almost paying homeage to the western genre. However, the tension drops straight away as they talk about a boring subject, the weather. This immediately drops the tension and lulls us as the spectators into a false sense of security. Hitchcock does this in many of his films so that when then tension reaches its climax the audience are very unsuspecting.