MY MOVIE SHELF: North by Northwest

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 110 Days to go: 76

Movie #330:  North by Northwest

I really dig Hitchcock. What always strikes me is the intention with which he frames every scene. Shots, positioning, dialogue and angles all have a specific purpose. Now, of course, there are several directors who insist on that level of detail and control over the look and feel of their pictures, but Alfred Hitchcock really set the standard. I’ve only seen a handful of his films (enough to get a feel for his style, but not a whole bunch by any means), and North by Northwest was one that had eluded me until now, and I’m really glad I finally got to watch it.

North by Northwest is almost like an episode of The Twilight Zone, throwing its protagonist into a surreal situation, confusing him and keeping him off-balance, and forcing him to scramble and flail to try to save himself. (I find it’s very similar to Vertigo in this way.) I’ve always found awful situations that were also plausible in the physical universe we inhabit to be far scarier than supernatural threats or gory violence or crazed villains, which makes North by Northwest‘s inciting event so terrifying: What if you were mistaken for someone else by a group of people who wished harm to the person you were mistaken for being? That’s what happens to Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), and it sends him down an awful, scary path.

I legitimately find that prospect incredibly frightening, because there would be so little you could do. If the man you’re mistaken for being is a spy known for changing his identity, it makes it even harder. Worse yet, if the bad guy realizes his error and comes to believe you’re not who he thought you were, well he’s still going to kill you because now you know too much and are expendable. It’s like getting your identity stolen and not being able to convince anyone you’re innocent. It’s like being Nick from Gone Girl, with the whole world thinking you bought thousands of dollars worth of goodies you were waiting to use until after you killed your wife. It’s just a mess, and there’s very little way out.

Luckily for Roger, the American spies know who he really is, so it no doubt eases the transition once he avoids being killed, but first he has to avoid being killed. However, beyond just the plot of the film or the iconic images it brought the world, North by Northwest also brought us Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall — a woman so fascinating and fantastic I could probably write a book about her.

Eve Kendall meets our hero as he’s on the run from the New York City police. He’s been mistaken for a man named George Kaplan (in part due to his own actions, proving that one of Hitchcock’s underlying themes in all his films is “Don’t make trouble for yourself, idiot”) and accused of the murder of a U.N. diplomat, so he’s running away to Chicago, where he believes the real George Kaplan is. Eve is beautiful, smart, charismatic, and overtly sexual without being tawdry. She parries every bit of innuendo he throws at her, and she does it with ease. The result is a sophisticated and incredibly lustful encounter, with no coyness or beating around the bush with regard to their interest in each other. It’s pretty hot, actually, like a Bond movie or something. And it’s even more like a Bond movie, because Eve has serious ulterior motives, which then become something else Roger is scrambling to figure out before it all unravels.

But unlike a Bond film, in which the chicks are generally disposable, Roger gets to keep Eve — once the bad guys are thwarted and all is well in the world, of course. And honestly, that cut to the closing shot of their train shooting into a tunnel just as Roger and Eve have started kissing in bed is about the funniest, most obvious sex reference in the whole movie (even more than when Roger outright talks about how often he wants to make love to the ladies). It’s so great — precisely because of how deliberate Hitchcock’s filmmaking is.

North by Northwest also deals pretty openly with the Cold War, which is interesting. What’s more interesting, though, is that bad guy Vandamm (James Mason) has an incredibly good-looking henchman named Leonard, PLAYED BY MARTIN LANDAU. Now, obviously, I knew logically in my head that Martin Landau wasn’t always a goofy old man, but I never would’ve expected this. It’s like a real live plot twist. Man, that Hitchcock was good.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Rounders

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 211  Days to go: 148

Movie #227:  Rounders

On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and while it’s the only real poker movie I’m aware of, it’s also one of the best movies poker could ever hope to have about itself. These guys get poker. I don’t play the kind of poker these guys play — I don’t play high stakes, and I don’t hustle and I certainly don’t visit shady poker houses in seedy corners of the city (any city) — but for anyone who is a serious player (at any level), Rounders knows what it’s like. It knows poker is about the read of the people you’re with. It knows it’s a skill. It knows other people don’t get it. It knows most people can’t play for shit. It knows sometimes you’re the sucker. It knows splashing the pot is a dick move and the only people who string bet are schmucks who think they’re big time even though everything they know about the game came from stupid movies. It knows the rush of getting a great read or playing a perfect hand. It knows the obsessiveness with which you replay all your worst beats. It knows there’s actually information to be gleaned by watching other people play. It knows everything.

Mostly, Rounders knows that the real draw of poker is not the cash. The cash is a benefit; the cash is a necessity. The real draw is the prestige of sitting down with a monster player and out-playing him. The real draw is in the finding out of whether or not you can hang. I’m not a high stakes player, and I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like to anymore, but I promise you I could sit down against anyone heads-up. Me and Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) have that in common — that confidence, at least. In my case, it’ll probably be a lifetime before I can put anyone’s money where my mouth is, but such is life. We can’t all be Johnny Chan.

On the surface, Rounders is about poker, and it’s a great poker flick, but it’s also about friendship. Mike has this no-good buddy from way back named Worm (Edward Norton), and the two are like brothers. Or at least, Mike has it in his head that they’re like brothers, so he lets Worm take advantage of him. Rounders is about that kind of toxic friendship, where the friends you had as a kid just aren’t your friends anymore — you’ve outgrown them, they haven’t grown up at all — but you keep hanging on. It’s about how tough it is to let go, and how easy it is to be drawn into their drama again, no matter how much time has passed. And as the realization gradually dawns on Mike that Worm is full of shit and not his friend at all, as he’s already in way too deep to dig himself out, it’s positively cringe-inducing. It’s a painful rite of passage, and it costs Mike a lot. It costs him his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol, who was this fresh-faced little gem in 1998 that I have a hard time reconciling with the hard-scrabble Mrs. Darmody from Boardwalk Empire), and it costs him his potential law school career, though maybe he doesn’t care about that as much as he thought (because the movie is also about finding yourself). Norton and Damon actually have great chemistry as dysfunctional friends, and Norton’s Method acting really sells him as quite the worthless wastrel (who, quite frankly, talks the table way too fucking much). Their camaraderie and their dissolution both feel earned, and it adds a higher level of stakes to the film than the money involved ever could.

John Tuturro is kind of fabulously understated as all-knowing, no-playing grinder Joey Knish, and Famke Janssen is sexy as ever as fellow shark Petra, but the real scenery chewer is John Malkovich (naturally) as Teddy KGB. Of course, Malkovich’s accent is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard, and his ridiculously simplistic Oreo tell is like child’s play, but his hilarious pantomiming and gesticulating and trash talking are things of beauty not to be missed. Plus, Martin Landau is off to the side as the minister of sage life advice Professor Petrovsky, and what’s not to like about that?

My only complaint about Rounders, honestly, (except for not liking Worm at all, but that’s kind of the point) is that for a kid who’s supposed to be some sort of table-reading, tell-observing prodigy, Mike (or Matt Damon’s face, one) has more tells than just about anybody. You’d think someone would’ve picked up on that.

Then again, maybe Mike isn’t quite as good as he thinks he is. I could probably take him.