Blog 3 - "North by North West"

‘’North by North West’’ Crop Duster Scene

        "North by North West" is a film which came out in the year 1959, it is a thriller which as written by Ernest Lehman and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The stars of the film are Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The film is about a "innocent" New York advertising execurive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and os pursued across america while he looks for lots of ways to survive. 

        This scene starts of slow starts of slow and it was in the middle of nowhere, a dusty scenery and this is the mise-en-scene of the scene. What Hitchcock said was that a typical thriller scene would be at night where it’s all dark on a corner of a street, in the city, floors maid from cobble washed with water and rain, standing under a straight light, a person looks through a window, having a black cat run across a wall waiting for a limo to come kill the person waiting, but what Hitchcock also said that he wasn’t going to make his scene. He wanted it done fresh and new, ‘’Therefor, will make the same scene with nothing.’’ He wanted it to be unique and different but keeping all the effects of a thriller.  Another thing that Hitchcock said about this is scene is ‘’A man is told to go to a spot and there the audiences suspect he will be shot.’’ Another thing I want to say about the mise-en-scene is that Cary Grant is all dressed up smart in this scene, this indicates to the audience that he is about to have an important meet up, but the scenery he is in also indicates that this is building up to something much bigger.

       

         I would like to speak the camera work in this scene. In this scene what we see a lot of is a establishing shot and what the establishing shot does is to show that his alone with no buildings or shelter.We see a lot point of view shots from Roger O. Thornhill, what this is indicating to the audience that he is becoming impatient continuslly looking up the road waiting for a man called George Kaplan. We also see medium shots of Roger O. Thornhill and what this is showing the audience the impatient look on his face as he waits. There is also long shots of him which indicate a scens of fear when we see a car coming down the road, we as the audience amidently suggest that Roger O. Thornhill is going to be shot. We then see a pan shot of the car passing Roger, then goes to medium shot of Roger as the car passes by and we see Roger slightly relieved yet disappointed. What he felt relieved for that someone didn’t shot him as the car passed, what he was disappointed about was that it wasn’t Kaplan. Then we have a wide shot of the two men and what made this made the audience think was that the other man was Kaplan when it wasn’t and this mislead the audience to think it was because the audience knows that Roger O. Thornhill is waiting for this guy called George Kaplan. Once the we know on what is going on, and we know that a plane is chasing Roger O. Thornhill we see the good use of a steady cam used when Roger O. Thornhill is running away from the plane. The steady cam was used to show the audience that something big is happening.  We see that it is a tense moment and by seeing a steady cam of Roger O. Thornhll running we can see that he is trying to get out out of this situation, but at this moment his not quite sure how he is going to get out of the situation. This makes the audience feel the same danger as Roger O. Thornhill in this situation and we feel sympathetic for him, this is because we know that he has been mistaken for George Kaplan, this is the only reason why he is getting gunned down by a plane.