*North by Northwest on TCM now. Began @ 10 p.m.

[elleng]

[rogerballard]

1. All time favorite...

Love Hitch, Great movie ! Great cast ! Great music ! I will stop now.

[rogerballard]

2. Love the house...

[elleng]

4. Heckuva house!

One of the best known houses in the history of Modernism is not a house at all, but an elaborate movie set. Created entirely at MGM studios in Culver City, California for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film, North by Northwest. In 1958, when the movie was in production, Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous Modernist architect in the world. His magnum opus, Fallingwater, was conceivably the most famous house anywhere. His renown in the Fifties was such that mass-market magazines like House Beautiful and House & Garden devoted entire issues to his work. Hitchcock instructed the set designers at MGM to design a house in the Wright style, by its creation, the image of the Vandamm House became an icon of Modernism in architecture.

Vandamm House, by MGM set Designers (Robert Boyle, William A. Horning, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace, and Frank McKelvey), for North by Northwest directed by Alfred Hitchcock

https://www.dailyicon.net/2008/08/icon-north-by-northwest-house/

[rogerballard]

6. Wow...

Thanks for sharing that ! I love FLW too, I refuse to go on a tangent...

[rogerballard]

3. Philip Ober (Lester Townsend)

Was at one time married to Vivian Vance. Everyone probably knows that.

[rickford66]

5. A terrific thriller, but some holes in the story.

Why use the ambassador's house when kidnapping Grant in the beginning? Why did Mason pretend to be the ambassador?

[rogerballard]

7. I hate holes...

Help me to understand.

[rogerballard]

8. I am going on a tanget

Philip Glass, Candyman, reminds me of North by Northwest opening titles...

[longship]

9. It's a romp! A film with no plot...

other than get the protagonists from NYC on a roughly North by Northwestern path and end up with a climax on the faces of Mt. Rushmore. Hitch even wanted to film a scene with Cary Grant hiding in the nose of George Washington going into a sneezing fit. They never filmed it.

The term MacGuffin is also applicable here. The trinket which all the brewhaha was allegedly about apparently had microfilm in it. Yet its existence makes no matter to the action surrounding it. It's only a MacGuffin, a ghost with no importance. It's like warp drive in Star Trek, get us to the next scene during the commercial, also a MacGuffin.

The script is brilliant, and the actors do great service with several stand-outs, including Mason, Landau, Landis (mother), in addition to Grant and Saint.

The Bernard Herrmann score is outstanding in setting up the action and the tone.

It is one of Hitch's most brilliant films.

But yes, it is a confusing mess of a plot, deliberately so.

[rickford66]

10. Thanks for the explanation.

I always thought it was just me who was a bit confused. I'll watch it again some time, probably the third or fourth time. I forgot about the Hitch cameo.

[Yavin4]

11. Watch how many times Cary Grant pulls cash out of his pockets.

It's like he has an endless supply. There weren't any ATMs back then.