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.
Everyone has seen the whole airplane chase, or at least a spoof of it, and while that's truly an incredible scene, it's only one incredible scene out of several. You rarely see referenced the shootout on the face of Mount Rushmore, nor do you see referenced one of the most inventive car chases ever, wherein Cary Grant has been fed an entire bottle of whiskey and is now being forced to flee the baddies in a car with no brakes.
Modern action films rarely show this much imagination. There are a few exceptions, the Crank films, some of the work of the Hong Kong masters of action, but after seeing Cary Grant in a drunken car chase, it's hard to get excited at a muscle car running through a fruit stand for the millionth time, or the hero running amok with a machine gun in either hand.
What this film has that most modern action films lack is context. When there's a shootout, it's not just any shootout, it's a shootout on the face of Mount Everest, so the action is complicated by the fear of falling. When Grant is chased into the crops, the biplane starts dusting them with pesticide, compromising his hiding place.
It was never enough for Hitchcock to just put the hero up against some badguys with guns, he had to put his heroes between a rock and a hard place, into situations where anything they could do to solve one problem would only lead to other problems. This made for better stories and 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.
This film, in addition to some great action, also has one of the all time great love scenes. When the hero and heroine embrace, we cut to a train going through a tunnel. The directness of this scene had Hitch saying "What's the big deal? I already did that!" when the X rated movies got big in the seventies.
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.
Everyone has seen the whole airplane chase, or at least a spoof of it, and while that's truly an incredible scene, it's only one incredible scene out of several. You rarely see referenced the shootout on the face of Mount Rushmore, nor do you see referenced one of the most inventive car chases ever, wherein Cary Grant has been fed an entire bottle of whiskey and is now being forced to flee the baddies in a car with no brakes.
Modern action films rarely show this much imagination. There are a few exceptions, the Crank films, some of the work of the Hong Kong masters of action, but after seeing Cary Grant in a drunken car chase, it's hard to get excited at a muscle car running through a fruit stand for the millionth time, or the hero running amok with a machine gun in either hand.
What this film has that most modern action films lack is context. When there's a shootout, it's not just any shootout, it's a shootout on the face of Mount Everest, so the action is complicated by the fear of falling. When Grant is chased into the crops, the biplane starts dusting them with pesticide, compromising his hiding place.
It was never enough for Hitchcock to just put the hero up against some badguys with guns, he had to put his heroes between a rock and a hard place, into situations where anything they could do to solve one problem would only lead to other problems. This made for better stories and 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.
This film, in addition to some great action, also has one of the all time great love scenes. When the hero and heroine embrace, we cut to a train going through a tunnel. The directness of this scene had Hitch saying "What's the big deal? I already did that!" when the X rated movies got big in the seventies.
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.
About the Author:
As you come to know the material you should be able to relax more, but you must think about it. Movie Download Sites Reviews Don't buy a shredding lead guitar player package if you've never even strummed a chord. These include big names such as Machel Montano, Bunji Garlin and KMC.
No comments:
Post a Comment