North by Northwest (Two-Disc 50th Anniversary Edition)
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DVD details
Actor: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. CarrollBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 136 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-11-03
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Cary Grant is the screen s supreme man-on-the-run in his fourth and final teaming with director Alfred Hitchcock. He plays a Manhattan adman plunged into a realm of spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint) and variously abducted, framed for murder, chased and in a signature set-piece, crop-dusted. He also hangs for dear life from the facial features of Mount Rushmore s Presidents. Savor
DVD Reviews of North by Northwest (Two-Disc 50th Anniversary Edition)
DVD Review: "So horribly sad. How is it I feel like laughing?"
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow! The Blu-ray is the transfer we've been waiting for. It eclipses all previous ones (at least, those I've seen), including the well-done LV.
"NbNW" has never been a particularly "good-looking" film. Projection prints were grainy and contrasty, with vivid, vulgar colors. This transfer -- made from the camera negatives, or something close -- corrects these problems.
For the first time, we can see just how /beautiful/ "NbNW" is, and the outstanding quality of the cinematography. The scene in which Mason closes the drapes and turns on the lights, while he and Grant eye each other and waltz around the room, has a sense of depth and "tonality" I've ever seen before. Even better is the scene on the train where Grant and Saint engage in "intercourse" while clothed and standing up (Hitchcock knew how to get around the censors! *). It's soft and romantic, a quality quite lost in previous transfers.
Interestingly, the matte paintings, rear projection, and static mattes are /less/ obvious than they were in previous versions. The scene in which Thornhill and the Professor walk toward the plane is perhaps the finest example of rear projection you'll ever see. You have to look closely to realize they're /not/ at an airport. **
"NbNW" was shot in VistaVision ("Motion-Picture High Fidelty"). It uses what still photographers would call a full 35mm frame (rather than the half frame used for movies), and therefore runs horizontally through the camera. Of all 35mm formats, VistaVision was /made/ for high-definition video. Its basic aspect ratio is 5:3 (within the 3:2 film frame), and it can be matted to wider aspect ratios in the camera or during projection. ***
"NbNW" was probably intended to be projected at 1.85:1. This transfer is at the slightly less-wide 16:9 (1.77:1), an excellent choice that fills the HD screen. Nothing is lost, and there are no distracting borders (for those bothered by such things).
And let's not forget the sound, because this is a Bernard Herrmann score. As far as I know, this is the first transfer to present all the music in stereo (ditto for sound effects). (The LV had only the overture in stereo.) The sound is fantastically good -- if you're so young you think "digital good, analog not-so-good", you need to hear this. ****
I have some gripes. Several shots in the crop-duster sequence have a "splotch" near the center, likely due to a water droplet that dried on the lens. And the brightness of some of the static mattes in the Mount Rushmore sequence flickers quite obviously. These would not have required a lot of work to correct.
Another reviewer has criticized the color, and I'm inclined to agree. Male skin tones are excessively warm, even yellowish. This is fine for Cary Grant -- who sported a perpetual Douglas Fairbanks tan -- but most of the male actors look as if they've spent too much time under a sun lamp. Now, get this... excerpts from this transfer used in the supplemental material have more-natural skin tones! Why this is, I don't know, but I've seen it on several recent Blu-rays -- the image quality in the supplements is better than that of the film itself.
As is becoming increasingly common for "important" movies, the disk is encased in a souvenir book. It's nice, but substance-free. You'll read it once, then put it aside. (It's a shame such books don't attempt to duplicate the contents of road-show souvenir booklets, but the format doesn't lend itself to it.)
As for the film itself, what is there to say? A classic, a perfect example of how Hitch was able to "play" the audience like an organ. In my "Snow White" review, I suggest that it is possibly the most consciously ingenuous film ever made. Hitchcock's films are the polar opposite -- consciously disingenuous. He's not just telling a story, but deliberately manipulating the audience. The audience knows it, but loves it anyhow.
Perhaps the most-amazing thing about "NbNW" is the way Hitchcock seamlessly melds humor, suspense, and action. (Grant's ability to switch instantly between restrained-ironic and dead-serious helps.) Only Steven Spielberg has come close. But he'll never be a Hitchcock.
* Thematically, "NbNW" is much like "Notorious" -- Ingrid Bergman is a "loose" woman coerced into marrying Claude Rains so she can spy on him for the government. In a famous scene, Hitchcock got around the Code's restriction on how long a man and woman can kiss by repeatedly having Grant and Bergman break the kiss, then start over -- which makes the scene even more sensual.
** MGM probably realized that VistaVision would reveal problems not visible in a smaller format, and spent the money for better effects shots.
*** Given the high cost of VistaVision prints and the need for a special projector, few theaters were able to project VistaVision as it was meant to be seen. Most VistaVision prints are half-frame reductions, which lose most of the original quality.
**** I used to do live recording, and digital comes closer to live sound. But... in the late 50s and early 60s, analog tape recording had reached a level of transparency, "immediacy", realism, and just plain "euphony" you rarely hear today. Simply in terms of "sounding good", this 50-year-old soundtrack is state-of-the-art. (If you want to hear a modern recording that's better -- that is, coming significantly closer to live sound -- try the Rilling performance of Britten's "War Requien".)
Description of North by Northwest (Two-Disc 50th Anniversary Edition)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST - DVD MovieA strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire?--Jim Emerson
Stills from North by Northwest (Click for larger image)
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