North by Northwest (1959) 4K UHD Review

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In my most recent movie journal, I rated North by Northwest with one star. Reader CleJackson noted this and said he was looking forward to reading my one-star review.

Of course, that rating was an accident. North by Northwest is one of my favorite movies. It is the perfect entertainment. It is Alfred Hitchcock at the height of his powers directing Cary Grant at the height of his charm.

I love it so much. I did review the new 4K UHD release of the movie and I definitely did not give it a one-star rating. You can read my thoughts over at Cinema Sentries.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

dead men don't wear plaid poster

I first learned of Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid inside a little video rental store. The VHS had a cool cover with Steve Martin on the front aiming a gun at the audience, a plaid outline behind him. This would be the late-ish 1980s and Steve Martin was a huge star. I was a young teen and loved Martin in movies like Three Amigos (1986), Roxanne (1987), and The Man With Two Brains (1983). I immediately picked the VHS up and talked my mother into renting it.

We took it home and I popped it in the VCR and pressed play. I was immediately disappointed. It was in black and white. I hated black-and-white movies. Or I thought I did. I’d never actually seen one. But black and white movies were old and old was bad. At least that’s what I thought back then anyhow.

I watched for maybe ten minutes then turned it off in disgust.

Many years later, when I learned that there are, in fact, many really great movies in black and white, I decided to give it another spin. I was definitely a classic movie fan by then, but just a beginner. I knew actors like Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Vincent Price. I’d seen a few film noirs but was by no means an expert.

The film is a homage to the classic film noirs of the 1940s. Through trick editing, it intercuts the new story with clips from 19 classic films. It does this surprisingly well.

Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon a private investigator who is hired by Juliett Forest (Rachel Ward) to investigate the murder of her father. During the investigation, he comes across a large crowd of interesting characters, which is where the classic films come in.

Sometimes Reardon will call someone on the telephone and it will be Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep (or some other classic film star in a classic movie) who will answer. The dialog is cut as if Reardon is talking to Phillip Marlowe. Other times he’ll meet up with someone and it will be Veronica Lake in The Glass Key (or some other classic film star in a classic movie). In these instances, the film will sometimes use an extra dressed like the classic film actor, shot from behind, so that they can interact with Reardon in a more realistic way. It is all done cleverly and that makes it a really fun watch.

The great Edith Head (in her last film) did the costumes and she did an amazing job matching everything up. Ditto the lighting and staging and everything.

The film was co-written (with Steve Martin) by Carl Reiner, and it was directed by him as well. Reiner is a vaudevillian at heart and this is very much in Martin’s very silly stage (long before he started writing for the New Yorker and Broadway). I have to admit I’m not a big fan of that style of comedy. It is too jokey for me.

It is also a bit cringe. There is an ongoing joke where Reardon feels Juliet Forest’s up, caressing her breasts because they were knocked out of place during a scuffle. Or another time Reardon gives Juliet a kiss when she has passed out. There are quite a few dumb gags like that that play very differently now.

I am now a very big fan of classic movies and film noir in particular. I’ve seen more than half the films included inside this movie and so all of that stuff was really quite delightful. It is very well done; clearly, the filmmakers are very big fans of classic movies.

The Amazing Adventure (1936)

the amazing adventure

I am very much a fan of Cary Grant. I’ve seen most of his most popular films so sometimes I like to dig a little deeper and find something somewhat obscure (as obscure as a film starring one of the world’s most famous actors that is). As a bit of trivia, The Amazing Adventure is the only film the British actor ever made for a British studio. Over there it was titled The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss and had a run time of about 120 minutes. It was reissued in the United States as The Amazing Adventure and was cut down to just one minute over an hour’s length. The copyright was never renewed and so it entered the public domain, causing there to be untold editions of the film released on home video. Most of these are copies of copies of copies and look pretty terrible and as far as I can tell the original British cut has been lost.

The film is a slight thing, it feels like a knock-off version of the film My Man Godfrey which came out around the same time, though this one plays it mostly straight. Cary Grant feels like an amoeba version of the persona he’d play for most of his career. The charm is there, as is the lightness of his touch, but it isn’t quite in full bloom yet.

He plays Earnest Bliss, a rich playboy who has grown bored with his life. When he sees a doctor to see if there is anything wrong with him, he’s told that his money is the problem. What he needs is a little hard work, and perhaps to go hungry once in a while and that will put him right with the world. They make a bet that Bliss can’t spend one year of his life without using any of his money for personal gain, which come to think of it sounds an awful lot like the plot of Brewster’s Millions too.

He finds a cheap room to rent and spends a few weeks looking for a job. He strikes out as a salesman but then comes upon an idea to make the business a roaring success. It works and inexplicably he quits that job and becomes a driver for hire. This allows him to be seen by all his old rich pals, all of whom seem completely nonplussed that he’s down and out. There is a love interest, of course, and naturally, Bliss learns that money isn’t what makes a man happy. It is hard work and love that do that. Then the film ends with him back in his high-rise apartment throwing an expensive party.

It isn’t nearly as funny as it ought to be, and the drama never really sticks. I’d be interested to see what is in those extra 20 minutes that were cut out, but I can’t imagine they would turn this thing into a classic. Its short run time is actually a benefit to the film as I didn’t get bored, which I would have had it run a little longer.

Definitely worth watching if you are a Cary Grant fan.

Hot Saturday (1932)

hot saturday blu-ray

I love a good Pre-Code movie (movies made after the advent of sound in 1927 and before the Production Code went into full effect in 1934). While often tame by today’s standards these films often dealt with taboo subjects and could be quite racy.

Hot Saturday is a film that couldn’t have been made just a few years later. It also stars Cary Grant in one of his earliest starring roles (and it’s also before Cary Grant became “Cary Grant” the star we all love and adore).

Kino Lorber released a nice Blu-ray of it a few months ago and I wrote a review for Cinema Sentries.

Calendar Movies: North by Northwest (1959)

This was originally written and posted on April 27, 2006.

Recently, I had lunch with the human resources director at my place of employment. Both she and the chief operations officer were down to my office for the day and I invited them out to Cracker Barrel (it was a cheap maneuver as my boss was out of town, and I knew they’d pay for the food.) I needed the COO as a buffer between me and HR because last time I had lunch with Human Resources I got drilled on my opinion on everything from our company values to how the janitorial staff is doing.

It worked perfectly, I got a good meal paid for, and the COO kept us distracted by trying to win that little triangle peg game all Cracker Barrels leave on the table. It’s quite a thing to see your boss’s boss’s boss cursing at a children’s game because it says he’s an “ignoramous.”

The toughest question I had to field from HR was about my favorite movie. I chose Casablanca much to the surprise of my questioner. Now, at 30, I’m not anywhere near a young whippersnapper, but I guess I’m still pretty far removed from an ancient classic like that.

The thing is, I really dig the old movies. I’m the kind of guy who goes to Blockbuster and heads for the center rows, not the outside aisles with new releases. I suppose this is a strange thing, where kids today haven’t even seen Star Wars much less The Third Man.

Seriously, the first time I found out someone at work had never seen Star Wars I nearly fell out of my comfy office chair. It is as bewildering to realize that a film that means so much to me and my generation could be a relic to a new generation.

But maybe this is just me. I prefer Turner Classic Movies to HBO. I’d rather watch Humphrey Bogart than Tom Cruise. Black and white is much sexier then high definition super color.

Watching a movie like this month’s Calendar Movie, North by Northwest I’m struck by the notion that it’s not so different from your summer Hollywood blockbuster these days.

You’ve got one of the biggest stars working at the time, Cary Grant, working with an A-list director, Alfred Hitchcock; that’s like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg working together. The story is full of big action, lots of laughs and brimming with sexuality. It would play perfectly in today’s multiplexes

It’s the sex that struck me in this viewing. No, there isn’t any nudity, or hard core action. There isn’t even any soft core action, or anything more than some kissing. But the dialogue is boiling over with innuendo and double entendres. And if you’re going to have double entendres, who better than Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint to do it?

Beyond the sex there is more action and twists than a porno staring Gumby and Pokey. The famous crop duster scene still excites beyond what most CGI adventures can muster in an entire film.

So I ask myself again, why do brilliant, solid pieces of filmmaking like this get left on dusty shelves to be replaced by boring, repetitive, unimaginative showcases of mediocrity? Is the movie going public so stuck on adrenaline pumping, computer generated eye candy, that the classics are above their threshold of understanding?

Partially I think that it is part of our cultural existence to get the newest, freshest product. We buy the new models of cars even though our old one rides just fine. We purchase the top of the line, brand new computer products because our 6 month old lap top is “outdated.”

No one stands around the water cooler talking about Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. We talk about box office receipts, and the new weekend releases. Hollywood asks us to. They can’t afford for an audience to sit around watching worn out VHS copies of Ninotchka when they just spend 100 million dollars on the new Vin Diesel picture.

Kids don’t get hip credibility by wearing t-shirts with Peter Lorre on them. That’s not the kids fault, for if they had the chance to watch Lorre in M his picture would be right out there like Al Pacino in Scarface.

I can’t help but think if more people were exposed to classics like North by Northwest there would be no surprise when a young man stated his favorite movie was Casablanca.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

to catch a thief poster

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film To Catch a Thief is a light, fluffy picture that differs in content from much of the suspense masters’ other pictures. Cary Grant stars as a former thief, and patriot of the French Resistance, who is currently suspected of a new series of crimes. Grace Kelly plays the beautiful daughter of a rich American woman who is high on the list of possible victims of the new cat burglar.

The plot is all cotton candy. Shot in the French Riviera, Hitchcock allows his camera to take all of the beauty in. There are lots of lovely traveling shots of the location. Hitchcock follows cars driving the streets in high crane shots, simmers through the sea on a boat ride, and stops to take in the view of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly at a picnic overlooking a stunning valley.

Cary Grant is playing Cary Grant at this point, but that’s perfectly fine since there are few actors I enjoy more. Grace Kelly is simply gorgeous. Hitchcock’s camera is as admiring as a new suitor. Their interplay is fun, witty, and sensuous. A famous scene between them intercuts their developing romance with fireworks and is pure sizzle.

If you are looking to write a thesis on the genius of suspense then you should look elsewhere. But for a beautifully shot, light-hearted romance for a Saturday night, it would be difficult to find a better picture.