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.
In this day and age, you rarely see this much imagination in action films. There are always exceptions like in the film Shootemup, or some of the Hong Kong classics of recent decades, but regardless, this film has more imagination and intelligence than a dozen other action films put together. Seeing Cary Grant cruising down the street, drunk as a skunk and dodging bullets... It's hard to get so excited over one more car running over yet another fruit stand.
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.
For Hitchcock, it was never enough to give the hero a gun and put him up against some baddies with bigger guns. He had to put them between a rock and hard place, he put them into spots where the only solution to any problem would also be the cause of a dozen other problems. This just plain made for better action.
The legacy the master left behind has since been frequently copied, turned into a formula. So few directors have innovated upon it, though. It has so infrequently been re-imagined or reshaped, only repackaged. Of course, we always have Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window to go back to and watch again and again, but still, if only modern filmmakers took Alfie's imagination, and not just his tropes.
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 seen it yet, the film is one of the all time great all-action movies, and the one that really gave birth to the genre. Without this film, we wouldn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger jumping out of a plan to catch a parachute in Eraser, we wouldn't have the excess of Kill Bill. It's truly with this film that the concept of big, wild action set pieces really began.
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.
In this day and age, you rarely see this much imagination in action films. There are always exceptions like in the film Shootemup, or some of the Hong Kong classics of recent decades, but regardless, this film has more imagination and intelligence than a dozen other action films put together. Seeing Cary Grant cruising down the street, drunk as a skunk and dodging bullets... It's hard to get so excited over one more car running over yet another fruit stand.
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.
For Hitchcock, it was never enough to give the hero a gun and put him up against some baddies with bigger guns. He had to put them between a rock and hard place, he put them into spots where the only solution to any problem would also be the cause of a dozen other problems. This just plain made for better action.
The legacy the master left behind has since been frequently copied, turned into a formula. So few directors have innovated upon it, though. It has so infrequently been re-imagined or reshaped, only repackaged. Of course, we always have Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window to go back to and watch again and again, but still, if only modern filmmakers took Alfie's imagination, and not just his tropes.
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 seen it yet, the film is one of the all time great all-action movies, and the one that really gave birth to the genre. Without this film, we wouldn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger jumping out of a plan to catch a parachute in Eraser, we wouldn't have the excess of Kill Bill. It's truly with this film that the concept of big, wild action set pieces really began.
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