Alfie Hitchcock is always remembered as the premier master of suspense, the undefeated master of the plot twist. Yes, he was all that, but he was also much more. He pioneered just about ever genre of modern film. He created the slasher film with Psycho, and in North by Northwest, he essentially created the first all-action blockbuster.
We've all seen the airplane chase, with Cary Grant being chased through the crops. It's certainly an exciting scene, but it's only one great action scene out of several. There's also the shootout on the faces of Mount Rushmore, and the classic drunk driving scene, wherein Cary Grant is forced to drink glass after glass of alcohol, and then finally put in a car with a cut brake line, so he's now forced to try to flee the badguys in a car with no brakes, while drunk.
In this day and age, you rarely see this much imagination in action films. There are always exceptions like in the film Shootemup, or some of the Hong Kong classics of recent decades, but regardless, this film has more imagination and intelligence than a dozen other action films put together. Seeing Cary Grant cruising down the street, drunk as a skunk and dodging bullets... It's hard to get so excited over one more car running over yet another fruit stand.
One thing this film has that most action flicks lack would be context. The climactic shootout isn't just a shootout, it's a shootout on the face of Mt. Rushmore. The chase scene with the biplane has Grant running into the crops only to have the plane dust him with pesticide. Layers of challenge were thrust at the hero and it only kept piling up.
For Hitchcock, it was never enough to give the hero a gun and put him up against some baddies with bigger guns. He had to put them between a rock and hard place, he put them into spots where the only solution to any problem would also be the cause of a dozen other problems. This just plain made for better action.
It's too bad that most people who make action films these days have copied Hitchcock's tropes and turned it into a formula, rather than actually looking at how and why it worked and tried making their own stories from there, coming up with new and fresher ideas.
The film also boasts one of the most direct love scenes of all time, depicting a train going into a tunnel. When X rated films got big in the seventies, Hitchcock said "I don't know what the big deal is, I already did this with North by Northwest!"
If you haven't yet, see it. It remains startlingly relevant and exciting all these years later, and makes a perfect antidote to the big budget blockbusters that have the scale and scope of North by Northwest, but not the style. - 40723
We've all seen the airplane chase, with Cary Grant being chased through the crops. It's certainly an exciting scene, but it's only one great action scene out of several. There's also the shootout on the faces of Mount Rushmore, and the classic drunk driving scene, wherein Cary Grant is forced to drink glass after glass of alcohol, and then finally put in a car with a cut brake line, so he's now forced to try to flee the badguys in a car with no brakes, while drunk.
In this day and age, you rarely see this much imagination in action films. There are always exceptions like in the film Shootemup, or some of the Hong Kong classics of recent decades, but regardless, this film has more imagination and intelligence than a dozen other action films put together. Seeing Cary Grant cruising down the street, drunk as a skunk and dodging bullets... It's hard to get so excited over one more car running over yet another fruit stand.
One thing this film has that most action flicks lack would be context. The climactic shootout isn't just a shootout, it's a shootout on the face of Mt. Rushmore. The chase scene with the biplane has Grant running into the crops only to have the plane dust him with pesticide. Layers of challenge were thrust at the hero and it only kept piling up.
For Hitchcock, it was never enough to give the hero a gun and put him up against some baddies with bigger guns. He had to put them between a rock and hard place, he put them into spots where the only solution to any problem would also be the cause of a dozen other problems. This just plain made for better action.
It's too bad that most people who make action films these days have copied Hitchcock's tropes and turned it into a formula, rather than actually looking at how and why it worked and tried making their own stories from there, coming up with new and fresher ideas.
The film also boasts one of the most direct love scenes of all time, depicting a train going into a tunnel. When X rated films got big in the seventies, Hitchcock said "I don't know what the big deal is, I already did this with North by Northwest!"
If you haven't yet, see it. It remains startlingly relevant and exciting all these years later, and makes a perfect antidote to the big budget blockbusters that have the scale and scope of North by Northwest, but not the style. - 40723
About the Author:
Depending on your preference, there are two types of TV tuner cards, one is internal and the other is external. Movie Game Rental To house such headliners, only a state of the art venue will do - and that's exactly what the new Nokia Theatre l.a. In the golden age of film, it would look interesting, but laughable.
No comments:
Post a Comment