North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest has been hailed as his most entertaining film.  With a case of mistaken identity putting a man in danger and being hunted across the country, it is an exciting time.  Throw in some planes, trains, automobiles and Mount Rushmore, the thrills take some unexpected turns over and over again.  Top it off with a dash of romance to twist the plot further and that trademark Hitchcock suspense and North by Northwest is nearly perfect.

The story is that of average ad man Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), an unglamorous bachelor complete with a badgering, overbearing mother (Jessie Royce Landis).  He is mistaken by a group of foreign spies as government agent George Caplan, kidnapped and taken to a mansion owned by a Mr. Townsend.  There, his kidnapper (James Mason) forces him to drink copious amounts of bourbon and sends him off down a dark, twisty road in a sports car.  This is got to be one of the most memorable, and thrilling drunk driving scenes on film.  In jail, no one believes the intoxicated Thornhill.  When he tries to prove his story, it seems that his captors have covered everything up and merely posed as Townsend.  Realizing that only the real Mr. Townsend can prove his innocence, Thornhill goes to the UN only to leave there wanted for murder.  He has no choice but to run from both the police and his assailants while trying to track down this George Caplan, which turns out to be one hell of a goose chase.

On the train ride from New York to Chicago, Thornhill finds a companion to keep him busy and even helps hide him from the authorities.  Eve (Eva Marie Saint) is another one of Hitchcock’s blond beauties to watch out for.  While she aids Thornhill and pulls him in with her beauty, she has her own agenda.  But when Thornhill finds out, he still cannot let her go, and his chivalry leads to a daring rescue and chase, scaling Mount Rushmore.

One of the most memorable scenes of this film is the crop duster scene.  After making it out of Chicago, Thornhill is told to wait for a ride, out in the middle of harvested corn fields.  The flat, expansive and isolating scene perfectly depicts the fields of the mid-west.  When a plane in the distance seems to be “dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops,”  tension builds and it is a kick to see Grant run and dive from a swooping plane.  It’s one of the most iconic moments of the film, and ends with quite an unexpected bang.

I’ve got to say, I love how this trailer shows Hitchcock selling this movie like a vacation package.  In 1959, people were flooding to theaters to see big epic films, like Ben Hur.  That was some fierce competition.  So why not send them from New York, to Chicago and on to Mount Rushmore with some murder and suspense?  I guarantee you will never see that monument the same way after watching North by Northwest.

However, while Hitchcock was selling it, the Academy was not buying it.  In the end, North by Northwest took home no trophies for its three Oscar nominations: Original Screenplay, Editing and Art Direction in a Color Film.

Today, North by Northwest that is an essential Hitchcock film and can still make for a fun time.  When I meet someone that has never seen a Hitchcock film, I suggest North by Northwest along with Psycho and The Birds.  Of those three, it’s the one that is most fast paced, fun and as the plot continually twists, you have to keep on your toes.

“I don’t like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.”

The Verdict

Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is a down-on-his luck, alcoholic lawyer in Boston.  In the past three years, he’s had four cases and spends most of his time either at a bar playing pin ball and shooting whiskey or peddling his business cards at funerals.  When a friend gets him an easy hospital negligence case, it becomes a chance at redemption for Frank.

Four years ago, a young woman was given the wrong anesthetic while going into labor and has been a vegetable in a coma ever sense.  Her sister and brother-in-law are seeking justice from the Catholic hospital.  We get the feeling that the hospital and  archdiocese have something to hide, especially when they’re willing to settle.  This should be an open-and-shut case for Frank, earning him enough money to let him drink away the rest of the time he has left.

Going to trial is more important to Frank than settling, he even turns down a settlement of two hundred thousand dollars.  He seems to be risking everything for his own chance to prove himself to himself.  But for that selfish moment for redemption, has he underestimated his opponent, defense attorney Ed Concannon (James Mason), and put his trust in an enemy?

While all this sounds interesting, I think there are a very select few who would really enjoy this movie.  You see, it’s very quiet and its action consists of tense quiet moments, conversations and the subdued intensity within the courtroom.  To many, The Verdict would be two hours of quiet boredom.

However, I found a silver lining to all this quietness and found myself surprised at how tuned in I was to every word, action and soft sound presented.  I think that’s what viewers are supposed to do here, it’s like we’re listening for something important on a radio that keeps fading in and out.  There are many slow and quiet moments for us to focus all our senses on.  In one amazing shot, Frank is watching a couple Polaroids he just snapped of the victim in a coma develop.  They slowly come into focus and color, and the camera doesn’t look away.  All we hear is the quiet hiss and pump of the machines keeping the coma ward alive.  The longer we watch, wait and listen, these sounds become deafening, yet they aren’t really rising.  The Verdict is full of moments like this, where we wait, watch become enticed and agonized wanting that pin to drop and break the tension lingering in the air.  Though I would not recommend this film to the masses, those who find an appreciation for courtroom dramas, Sidney Lumet’s work and what I’ve described here are encouraged to seek The Verdict out.

“You guys… you guys are all the same!  The doctors at the hospital, you… it’s always what I’m going to do for you.  And then you screw up, and it’s, “Ah, we did the best that we could, I’m dreadfully sorry.”  And people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.”

Heaven Can Wait

Wait, didn’t we review this already?  Nope, there are two Best Picture nominations named Heaven Can Wait, one in 1943 and the other here in 1978.  In the earlier Heaven Can Wait, a man tells his life story to Satan.  Here is a completely different story, the remake of the 1941 film, Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) has just become starting quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams.  While he is out for a bike ride, he is about to be in a horrific crash, but The Escort (Buck Henry) in charge of taking Joe to the other side takes him just before the crash, to lessen Joe’s suffering.  Big mistake, it seems that Joe would have lived through it and was not scheduled to die for another fifty years.  Now Joe feels cheated and angry because he had his heart set on taking the Rams to the Super Bowl.  So Mr. Jordan (James Mason) promises to find him a new body to occupy, one that he can play football in.  They find a millionaire, Leo Farnsworth, who’s just been poisoned by his wife and accountant.  Joe steps into his body to help a young woman, Betty Logan (Julie Christie), and is suddenly in charge of a huge corrupt company and makes some changes, which includes buying the Rams so he can try out for quarterback.

Compared to how fun and zany Here Comes Mr. Jordan was, this remake feels like a bunch of garbage.  Though the plot is basically the same, it feels so outlandish and silly, somehow I couldn’t take it seriously.  The characters are way too flimsy.  Mr. Farnsworth’s murders are just dopey lovers who run around like headless chickens until they find a new means of murder.  And this Joe is just a football jock.  The heart that Robert Montgomery gave him in Here Comes Mr. Jordan seems to have been muted and forgotten.  He’s dead up in clouds but he runs around with a soprano sax and does pushups because that’s all he knows.  It’s a cute little motif and his big halftime pep talk in a board meeting is amusing enough, but it’s harebrained.  I never felt that Here Comes Mr. Jordan was this silly.  The whole thing goes way too far once he buys the Rams.

Once this film hit its final act, I could see every event right to the end (not just because this is a remake) and it takes too long to get there.  I became annoyed with the whole eye being a portal to the soul reference; do we really need to watch people stare at each other so much?  That idea came through perfectly in Here Comes Mr. Jordan without a staring contest.  There needs to be a rule that when an ending is so blatantly obvious it shouldn’t be so stretched out unless you can create some decent suspense.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan worked wonders in 1943, but somehow the charm and heart was lost in this remake.  Maybe it was entertaining enough in 1978, but honestly, I think this film is better off parodied by South Park.  The jokes would be funnier and we would not be pressured to take Beatty’s version of Joe so seriously.  I would love to see a little wide-eyed construction paper Joe running around in the clouds, carrying his soprano sax saying in a South Park voice:

“I gotta get the Rams to the Super Bowl!”

Julius Caesar

Based on Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar tells the story of a group of Roman conspirators who plot to murder Caesar (Louis Calhern) before his ambition for power turns to tyranny.  Brutus (James Mason) unites them under this cause for the greater good ofRome, but truthfully, Cassius (John Gielgud) and the other men murder out of their own envy of power.  Caesar is warned, “Beware the Ides of March!” by a blind soothsayer and Calpurnia (Greer Garson) warns him of an ominous dream she had, but Caesar has an image to maintain and he ignores both warnings only to be murdered by the men he trusted.  When Caesar’s right hand man, Marc Antony (Marlon Brando), learns of the conspiracy and murder, he cunningly proves his loyalty to Caesar and turns the Roman people against Brutus, drives the conspirators out of Roma and assembles a more powerful army to track them down and kill them.

Marlon Brando’s performance as Marc Antony is one of the most invigorating Shakespearean performances I’ve ever seen on film.  When one is simply reading the play alone, grasping a good inclining tone forAntony’s speech to the Romans can be tricky.  Here, Brando escalates that speech perfectly, better than I had ever imagined as a student.  Throughout the film, he is consistently the most intense character surrounding Caesar and captivates our interest more than Mason’s Brutus or Gielgud’s Cassius.  The way Brando’s performance stands above the rest and transforms Shakespeare’s words into such dramatic and conniving passion is worth of the Oscar nomination.

The film rightfully won for best art direction for black and white film.  From depicting the great marble stairs and pillars to Roman tents, each has a wonderful attention to detail and feels very real.  Even in smooth, bare roman walls, the presence of bare tree branches, in the foreground or as shadows on walls, help make an interesting visual, especially in Brutus’s monologue the night before the murder.  And between the classical Roman robes and leather army uniforms, the costume design is wonderfully accurate and full of beautiful tiny details.

With a good mix of murder, double-crossing and classical Roman themes, Julius Caesar has always been my favorite Shakespeare play, but rarely do you find a film adaption that can do it justice.  This is one of the few, the acting is wonderfully active, dramatic and easy for those who haven’t studied the play to follow along with.  The art direction and attention to details in all the settings in costumes is top-notch, yet doesn’t feel too far removed from a simple stage.  If you’re interested in your first Shakespeare film experience, I would strongly suggest Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar.

“O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.”