19 - North by Northwest: Hitchcock's Monument to the Hitchcock Film

Summary

Made in 1959, North by Northwest comes at the end of the period during which Hitchcock's popularity was at its height. It follows Vertigo, considered by many his greatest film, and is followed by Psycho, which throws the Hitchcock film, and with it the whole Hollywood tradition, into a state of crisis. Psycho prophesies the death of the world of movies, but North by Northwest is joyfully possessed by the spirit that animated The Thirty-nine Steps, the film that twenty-five years earlier first won the whole world as Hitchcock's audience and triumphantly established the “Hitchcock thriller” as a genre. North by Northwest perfectly recaptures the earlier film's exhilarating mood, building to a climax that leaves most audiences, even today, cheering on their feet. It is the definitive Hitchcock thriller, providing a bounty of matchless pleasures. Indeed, it goes beyond The Thirty-nine Steps by attaining an ending that is perfectly happy.

In The Thirty-nine Steps, the poignant death of Mr. Memory gives the union of Hannay and Pamela a melancholy aspect that compromises its joyfulness. The film is further haunted by the tragic fate of Margaret, the crofter's wife, the woman who gives Hannay the overcoat that stops the bullet aimed at his heart. Margaret is a woman of intelligence, passion, and spiritual depth, haunted by the knowledge that suffering is her lot; she is an ancestor of the tragic heroines of The Wrong Man and Vertigo. Margaret grants Hannay her blessing, as does the dying Mr.