North by Northwest (1959)

A New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is perused across the county while he looks for a way to survive.

Director:

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Writer:

 ERNEST LEHMAN

Stars:

CARRY GRANT

EVA MARIE SAINT

JAMES MASON

Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action. The man (Mr Thornhill) was deserted waiting for Kaplan, film maker builds tension by having cars drive by and a man waiting for the bus to make us think that Kaplan but then Thornhill is attacked by a person in a plane and then the plane crashes into a petrol tank and it explodes this creates tension and this grabs the attention of passers-by so they stop and get out of the cars and Thornhill steals one of the cars to escape from the villain.

“resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more powerful and better equipped villains” – this is true because he stole the man’s clothes on the train so he was undercover and it would of took them a longer time to find him.

Devices such as suspense red herrings and cliff-hanger’s are used extensively in north by northwest by when he was hanging off of the cliff this was a cliff-hanger and was a suspending moment because we didn’t know if he was going to die or not. Also when Eve Kendal took Roger Thornhill into her room we thought she was in on it, but we eventually find out she wasn’t.

A Thriller is a villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome. MacGuffin is a plot element that drives the plot along, in North by North west they had to protect the microfilm, so this drives the plot along because you wonder whether they are going to lose it or not. The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are willing to do anything and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, in some ways also unimportant to the plot, common examples are often money, victory, glory and survival.

The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers commonly though not always the McGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act. It may come back into play at the climax of the story but sometimes it is normally forgotten by the end of the film.

Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience “to put their tow in cold water of fear to see what it’s like” The genre is flexible and can engage the audience through a dramatic rendering of psychological, social and political tensions.