The Hip Pocket #34: NORTH BY NORTHWEST

A fond look at one of Hitchcock's highest high points

There is no single canon.

We all have movies we love.

Some of them are great movies. Some of them are terrible movies. Love does not care. Love is unreasonable. Love is blind. We love what we love, and the louder you love it, the better.

One of my favorite things is sharing a film I love with someone. Even if they don't love it the same way I do, that experience imparts something about you to that person. When you share something you love, you are sharing a part of yourself, and there is nothing more vulnerable or personal than that.

I don't think of these movies as the canon or the official library or anything that formal. These are all just movies I keep in my hip pocket, movies I've filed away as part of my own personal ongoing film festival as worthwhile and notable.

This is an ongoing list, one without an ending. This is The Hip Pocket.

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North by Northwest
Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landon, Leo G. Carroll, Josephine Hutchinson, Philip Ober, Martin Landau, Adam Williams, Edward Platt, Robert Ellenstein, Les Tremayne, Philip Coolidge, Patrick McVey, Edward Binns, Ken Lynch
cinematography by Robert Burks
music by Bernard Herrmann
screenplay by Ernest Lehman
produced by Alfred Hitchcock
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Not Rated
2 hrs 16 mins

[This review is reprinted from the Pull The Strings series]

“If it’s Alfred Hitchcock, you know it’s good.”

My ten-year-old recently chirped that from the back seat of the car as I was driving, and while I was entertained by how much sorrow he’s in for when he lays eyes on some of Hitchcock’s lesser works, it was exciting to see how much he’s tuned in to the strong authorial hand the director had on his career.

I’m not a believer that every film belongs to the director. I think most films are completely collaborative, the result of a magical alchemy that results from all sorts of artists coming together. I’ve seen movies where I can’t imagine them without a specific prop or a hat or a location or a small grace note in a performance, and the more time you spend working on film sets, the more you understand just how many unseen hands contribute to every single bit of magic. But there are certainly directors who had strong authorial voices, and recognizing them is part of learning to read film as an art form.

This summer, I introduced the boys to Hitchcock with the full-force blast of Psycho and it was pretty amazing. Somehow, they had avoided spoilers for the film in pop culture, something I would have thought impossible. Even so, when we sat down to watch it, they were hit by each new twist and turn like a freight train, and the final reveal was amazing. Toshi’s actually planning to go as Norman Bates for Halloween this year. When I ask them now if they want to see a Hitchcock film, it’s an instant yes. We also watched Rear Window, and that one played perfectly as well. It seemed only right that they would join me for the Pull The Strings screening of North By Northwest.