Week 5: North by Northwest

In Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, he utilizes several symbolic trademarks of his directorship in scenes such as the one from 44:40 to 50:00. This scene is just a variety of flirtatious dialogue exchanged between Thornhill and Kendall. However, within this, Hitchcock places notable details of significance to his signature motifs and plot movement.

Hitchcock uses mis-en-scene in an incredibly plain manner with Thornhill’s matches. He performs a close-up shot of the matches at 48:11 so that the audience is in clear sight of the letters on Thornhill’s matches. These are later used to give a subtle warning to Eve when she had not yet realized she had been discovered by Vandam.

We see a glaringly obvious usage of one of Hitchcock’s motifs in Eve Kendall herself – a blonde woman. This harkens to the audience that this woman will most likely be the female interest in the movie. Hence, this may allude to Eve not being a traitor to this story’s protagonist.

Finally, around 49:06, Hitchcock inserts a classic theme recurring throughout his movies – the usage of the number thirteen. Eve explains to Roger that she is residing in “thirty-nine oh one” making a clear reference to the usage of thirty-nine, a multiple of thirteen. It should be noted that this is deliberate in that she may have just as easily said “three thousand, nine hundred and one” or “three nine oh one,” but she did not so it should be inferred that the thirty-nine was deliberate. Hitchcock even goes so far as to have Roger repeat the numbers at 49:14 wishing to only further emphasize this motif. Furthermore, at 47:06, Eve reveals her age to be twenty-six, yet another multiple of thirteen. Collectively this could be seen as Hitchcock’s attempt to make more profound a scene that, at a cursory level, is a lighthearted scene – a break from the busyness of the rest of the film.