Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if my problems and your plans were somehow connected?”
North by Northwest is a gorgeous American pilgrimage and classic mistaken identity thriller from Alfred Hitchcock that starts in New York City and ends at Mount Rushmore, America’s “Shrine of Democracy”. Earlier this week, in the American Landscape art history class that I am taking, there was a discussion about Mount Rushmore. This class is largely focused on the role of art in imperialist nation-building. There is much critique of colonialism in class and this day there was much critique of this tumid display of American ego. Ironically, the Department of Interior and the National Park Service objected quite vehemently to Hitchcock’s film noting (without irony) that the portrayal of violence desecrated the national monument.
I think of Mount Rushmore as a bad tattoo on the flexed bicep of a muscle-tee wearing mullet-headed country. I have to wonder what this Brit saw in the location. Was it just a plot coupon or is there some sort of critique? When the film was made, the monument was less than twenty years old. Hitchcock told the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, “I always wanted to do a chase scene across the faces of Mt. Rushmore,” and that was the starting point for the movie. Or rather the ending point. Citing “patent desecration” the Department of Interior would not allow Hitchcock to film on the monument. So, he had a large replica built in a Hollywood studio where the chase scene was filmed. Even after filming switched to the set in Culver City, the Department of Interior instructed Hitchcock/MGM not to show anything above the Presidential chins when shooting the Mount Rushmore scenes. Amusingly, the working title for the film was “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose”. Hitchcock reportedly had wanted to film a humorous scene of Cary Grant having a sneezing fit while standing in Lincoln’s nostril.
Nothing could be built, even temporarily, at the Mount Rushmore site. Therefore the iconic mid-century modern Vandamm house was also a set constructed in Hollywood. The exterior shots of the house, reminiscent of a Julius Schulman Case Study photograph, is a matte painting (a pre-digital effect when a real set or location was combined with a painting). Hitchcock had wanted to get Frank Lloyd Wright to design the house, but his fee was too high for the film’s budget. Instead, they just dreamed up a house that looked like it could have been designed by Wright and built it in Culver City. The house featured the ubiquitous modernist cantilever design, but it had no glass in the windows (to avoid reflections while filming) and the limestone walls were just plaster.
In the introduction to this blog, I mentioned that I may have been intoxicated while watching these films in my youth. I remember waking up on more than one occasion and quoting Roger Thornhill, “They tried to kill me with bourbon!” This time around, I was completely sober – just eating pumpkin pie and drinking tea and loving every minute of this film.