Filmmaking Comments: David Thomson on the vanishing of directorial signature
Jun 17th, 2009 by Peter D. Marshall
“Fifty years ago, when Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest opened, it was received with gratitude, appreciation and nearly complete misunderstanding. After all, said the wise judges of 1959, the world is not like this – its schemes of espionage do not turn on men as frivolous and charming as Cary Grant’s character in the film.
Those people boarding the American railway system cannot expect to meet femmes as fatale as Eva Marie Saint (behaving in a very unsaintly manner). And it was absurdity – albeit a killer joke – to have a bus stop on a bare midwest prairie, where a plane might hunt a man. All of those ingredients, it was said, were at the convenience of the movie, the essence of its movieness. But you’d never find them in life.”
Read the rest of this article from David Thompson.
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