Hitchcock had a penchant for using national landmarks for effect. Places like the United Nations building, Jefferson Memorial, Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge and Royal Albert Hall in London are some examples.

Loved your reaction. The famous scene where you correctly predicted the villains would try to kill Thornhill, you described as dangerous. Another reactor, Dasha of Russia, said it looked like a place where you would sell your soul to the devil. That scene is so iconic and yet it's utterly desolate, a tribute to Hitchcock's direction and ability to build tension in the most generic of places.

Before he is kidnapped, Cary Grant walks through the hotel lobby. The music playing in the background is from an MGM musical. The song is titled, ‘It’s a Most Unusual Day’. It is indeed.

Nice! Eva Marie Saint made her film debut in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in it. Also check out that film when you can. Her other notable film appearances include A Hatful of Rain (1957), Raintree County (1957), The Sandpiper (1965), and Grand Prix (1966).

Ware points out that his LSD sessions coincided with the star’s professional heyday. “This was the time of North by Northwest and Charade. So all that period when he is the biggest box office star in the world is also the period when he’s taking LSD. He has reached this incredible level of total minimalism, inner peace. I’m sure the acid informed the acting.”

This IS my favorite Hitchcock movie!

The gun thing... it's because these days, they ain't got style.

"Pay the two dollars" is the punchline to an old comedy routine where a guy gets in more and more trouble while trying to avoid a two-dollar fine. Roger's mother was suggesting that he'd be better off admitting to drunk driving that he would be fighting the charge. The music was by Bernard Hermann, one of the great screen composers. He also did the music for "Psycho," "Vertigo," "Citizen Kane," "Taxi Driver," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Cape Fear," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and many other movies. How they hold guns in movies is a matter of what the director thinks will look good. For a while it was a fad to show people holding guns sideways. No one who knows anything about guns would do that. They just thought it looked cool. More Hitchcock movies to react to: - Vertigo - Psycho - Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock's personal favorite of his films) - To Catch a Thief - The Birds - Notorious - Rebecca If I can recommend a couple of non-Hitchcock suspense movies: - The Third Man (1949) - The Conversation (1974) Both of these are highly-rated films, but there aren't many reactions to them on KZbin.

The style of holding guns changed in that the action movies of the 80s made a trend to show them progressively more "macho" and "gangsta like". Some of the ways modern movies show people holding guns are ridiculously overdone (including the stupid "pumping action")

The Henrietta deadite was played by director Sam Raimi’s younger brother Ted.

If you keep watching more Hitchcock, and want to try some of his older films - there are 2 in particular that have numerous elements which show up in NBNW. The 39 Steps (1935) and Foreign Correspondent (1940). You can see how Hitchcock took certain ideas and refined them, used modern techniques, reworked them, modernized them for NBNW. But it is really fun to see the same themes: wrongly accused protagonist; protagonist who is witty, charming, clever; foreign intrigue; train travel; antagonist who is suave, clever and intriguing; very unusual ways that the villains attempt to destroy the protagonists; scripts that are humorous and sometimes slyly risqué; scenes with meals; very unique crowd or escape sequences; unusual locations; memorable dramatic set pieces; romances that get complicated; and lots more. Other films utilize all these as well, but those 2 titles in particular seem like forerunners to NBNW.

Crop-dusting is a quick way to spray pesticide on a lot of crops. That's what the dust is-powdered poison.

You'll find that Grant's dialogue in many roles is humerous and flirtatious. TO CATCH A THIEF and CHARADE are good examples.

Not in a creepy way as I’m a happily married old man, but you really do have a beautiful smile. Your laugh is so infectious 🙂

If you want to have a great time with Cary Grant, watch _The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer_ (1947). I'd love to see you laughing at that comedy.

That wss the Hollywood way to hold a gun. That way it stayed within the frame of the picture. They didn't have to be realistic as audiences then were not as familiar with guns and their use.

Most pistols in movies, modern and old, are held in unrealistic positions. It's just the movie-makers' ideas of what will look cool. That said, holding it down by your hip may be a good idea in some situations. If you're trying to use a gun to scare someone, but you aren't ready to aim it and don't want to put your gun-hand out in front of you at shoulder-height, where your opponent might get hold of the gun or your hand or your arm, holding it near your hip may be good. A hip-position is also less conspicuous, in case you want some people around you not to notice that you're holding a gun and threatening someone.

On guns in old movies, Hollywood at this time followed a bunch of rules called the "Hays Code", and one of the rules was that you had to be really careful about how you portray gun use on screen. Gun scenes had to be toned down to meet the rules, which is why you get no blood, no pointing guns at the camera, and no pointing guns menacingly at people's heads. So how people held guns in films at this time was mostly to meet Hollywood censorship rules.

Hitchcock did most of his cameo appearances early in the films, starting in about 1955. He found out too many people were looking for him, so he just moved his appearances way back toward the beginning so the audience wouldn't miss out on plot points. 48:18 Cary was a acrobat in his teens when he was doing vaudeville acts in England, so he did do a lot of his own stunts in movies. 54:14 Yes, holding a pistol real close to your body with your arm bent at the elbo isn't a good way to get off any sort of accurate shot and the kickback throws your arm backwards or sometimes upward.

Loved 😍 watching your reactions! You are so smart at figuring things out ahead of time. Ut seems to be innate. I hope you will take a moment and look at the closing title where ut says THE END. The image is if a speeding train going into a tunnel. That is visual double entendre. Think abt it. I wish the movie sound were louder. I'm old & if I turn up the film you're watching, you and the KZbin ads are too loud. Would headphones help? Maybe not. Ask around; somebody knows. I'm so happy you're doing reactions now. You're a lot of fun to watch & have excellent insights! Thank you!!!

This was such a fun reaction to watch! It's not often you're so wrong about so many things, which was amusing to see. Definitely check out Vertigo as well. It's generally considered Hitchock's finest film, though it actually did quite poorly when it was released despite high critical praise. It also was one of the earliest true psychological thrillers which more firmly established it as its own genre and also established many of the tropes for films in the genre that would follow. There's also a nice mystery element that you'll probably enjoy trying to figure out.

32:58 "It's already in the newspaper? That thing happened today. When did they print that?" It used to be common for some newspapers to print more than one edition per day-such as a morning edition and an afternoon or evening edition (also called "early" and "late"). Back when it used to be common for larger cities to have more than one daily newspaper, sometimes one would come out in the morning and the other in the afternoon: the two papers shared the market between then, the early one offering the advantage of giving you news first thing in the morning, the afternoon edition having the advantage of telling you in the evening what had happened as recently as that very morning. (Back when the world relied more on paper for the transmission of information, some places also had more than one mail-delivery per day. In Victorian times, at least one part of London got as many as nineteen mail-deliveries per day.) The "FINAL" in the upper-right corner of the front page of the newspaper at 31:52 lets you know that it is that day's final edition of the _Chicago Sun-Times_ (there won't be another one until the next day).

Combat handgun tactics have evolved a great deal in the last half century with the advent of more modern firearms and ammunition and numerous competitive handgun competitions and associations that have changed tactics, stances, grips, etc. Older movies often aped cowboy style shooting.

"Good night, Mr. Thornhill, wherever you are." This was a shout out to comedian Jimmy Durante. Durante had a television show at the time. At the end of every show he would sign off with, "Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are."

As expected, another great reaction. If you would like another Cary Grant (at his peak) movie, 'Charade', with the beautiful Audrey Hepburn, would suit you. Regarding the pistol thing, I think a reason would be that popular handguns were smaller (easy to conceal) back then, so smaller calibre, less recoil. A modern handgun in an untrained hand could easily cause physical damage during recoil. The correct way is 2 handed at arms length. Anyway, keep up the good work, already looking forward to your next post. ; )

I don't think that he made cameos in his earlier films. I know that he did in 1954's REAR WINDOW and TOCATCH A THIEF. And I know that he did so as late as 1963 in THE BIRDS. I don't know outside of those perameters.

Great reaction! You might try Hitchock's "Vertigo," "Marnie," or "The Lady Vanishes." In an interview I read, Hitchcock was asked if "North by Northwest" had any deeper meaning or symbolism. He said something like "No. No symbolism....Oh, excuse me, only the very last shot."

Buzz in Spanish mode was my favorite part of this movie too. Mr. Tortilla Head killed me also.

And they're together for the train to enter the tunnel.

This film always brings a tear to my eye. It's such a great movie. ❤

The whole impetus for this movie was Hitchcock's vision for chase scene across Mount Rushmore.

The score is superb also.

You did great spotting Hitchcock's cameo today. Hollywood usually has trouble when it comes to firearms and facts. Quick draw shooting on main street never really did happen in the "wild west" any more than it does today with street gangs and drug cartel hits in today's towns. Ambush and surprise favor the winner. Holding a person at gunpoint (while not wanting to be noticed) it makes sense to keep the weapon close to the side as not to be obvious, and for a very close range shot it works, but powder burnt clothes may result. Serious shooters will use two hands and a support to rest the gun against to increase the chance of a good shot. A rare few actors and directors like Tom Selick and John Milius are experienced with firearms and their films show it.

That is genuinely how all French people sound to us

As for the gun question... professionals didn't hold them that way, either. The recoil would throw the shooting arm all over the place and you would not even be trying to use the sight to get an accurate shot. The weirdo gun stance is totally a BS Hollywood thing. As for the plane the one guy was the pilot, and the other was a shooter using a handheld Thompson style machine gun. You could sense the firing rate audibly.

My guess about the gun-holding is that it seems less violent to hold it in reserve than stretching it out toward a potential victim. Violent situations were portrayed less violently back then. As another example involving guns, they didn't usually show bloodstains in shootings. Different societal standard back then I think. Good point on your part, I thought.

He should have listened to his (real life) wife. Is that why they divorced?

All of the settings in and near Rapid City SD except for the actual faces (which were reconstructed in a back lot) are real buildings there. The only thing is that there are no such houses behind the faces. Most of my remaining family live in the Black Hills so the places are familiar.

In older movies the way of holding guns was done for effect or for framing. It was not good composition to hold it too far away in a profile shot. Today the audiences know far too much about guns and it looks stupid to do it the old way.

To answer your gun hold style: up until the 70s the common training method developed by Colonel Rex Applegate for close quarter combat in those days was instinctive point shooting without using the sights to aim the pistol. In the 70s Colonel Jeff Cooper single handedly changed that with his method of using the gun sights because it proved through testing to be more effective than point shooting and required less training and less practice.

“You’re sweet But you’re just four feet And you’ve still got your baby teeth” My Lord I’d forgotten the lyrics 😂

Did you spot the kid sticking his fingers in his ears in anticipation of the gunshot in the Mount Rushmore restaurant scene?

A TV series you must react to is “Outlander”. Fabulous series. It would be your favorite series ever.

Notorious is one of his best

Another great cary grant hitchcock movie is to catch a thier

Your reaction to Hitchcock films got me to subscribe. I think there were two people in the plane that crashed, because it wasn't a fighter plane so there were no weapons mounted on it that the pilot could operate. There must have been a second person to shoot the gun. I love Cary Grant. His physical acting and line delivery are legendary. I'd recommend watching Arsenic & Old Lace for a great comedy performance from him.

Back then, newspapers had a morning and afternoon edition. Radio was the only other news.

The actress is Eva Marie Saint She is 101 years old,Still quite beautiful and still very healthy! She also starred in a great movie with Marlon Brando On the Waterfront!

Holding the gun close to the body looks cool, like a gangster. Holding it up at arms length is how they teach you to use and AIM the gum.

One was flying, one was shooting, both were burning. Somebody needs a fridge.