She is determined and uses all her feminine best cards. At the beginning of their meeting she seems to be a superficial, sex interested woman, giving a slight sense of nymphomania. During her adventure with Roger Thornhill she falls in love with him. A theme frequently used in American films (take for example all James Bond films, sexy women ready anytime to jump in the hero's arms). At the end Eve and Roger seem a happily married coupled going on a honeymoon, and the viewer is given the impression of the perfect companion, a future ideal mother and wife, and Roger the devoted husband. They had there moments of doubt, when Roger thought Eve betrayed him and named her a person with no feelings, but Roger realized his mistake and they reconciled. The characters seem to have been "educated," transformed because of their experience together; they have "grown up."
The final battle with the foreign agent on Mount Rushmore is again outrageous because it can be considered unrealistic, but in spite of this, it is reckoned as a Hitchcockian masterpiece. The ending is fabulously constructed. As Roger is fighting to pull Eve on top of the mountain the frame changes and the audience is transported into the train where the couple looks so happy. So the American cinema theory is respected, the viewers are given the satisfaction of a happy ending. Concerning the final scene from the movie Alfred Hitchcock confessed in Cahiers du cinema. No.102: "There are no symbols in North by Northwest. Oh yes! One. The last shot, the train entering the tunnel after the love-scene between Grant and Eva-Marie Saint. It's a phallic symbol. But don't tell anyone." The heads of the presidents on Mount Rushmore are considered "guardians of order." They are the barrier which Eve and Roger must break in order to escape.
American cinema values the strict division of the characters into good and evil, and in the end good is triumphant. In "North by Northwest" there are the good guys: Roger and Eve and obviously...
The spectator is unwittingly sutured into a colonialist perspective. But such techniques are not inevitably colonialist in their operation. One of the innovations of Pontocorvo's Battle of Algiers is to invert the imagery of encirclement and exploit the identificatory mechanisms of cinema in behalf of the colonized rather than the colonizer (Noble, 1977). It is from within the casbah that we see and hear the French troops and helicopters. This
According to Francois Truffaut, "Hitchcock is universally acknowledged to be the world's foremost technician, even his detractors willingly concede him this title," and other critics state, "Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire cinema," while still others assert that "his films remain central to questions of cinematic practice and critical theory" (Kirshner). Psycho was one Hitchcock's favorite films, because he derived his main satisfaction from
This ties closely with Hitchcock's belief that "dialogue means nothing" in and of itself. He explains, "People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another, a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs." Thus the focus of a scene within his movies never focuses on what actors say, but rather on what they are doing. Unlike a painter,
From this came our insistence on the drama of the doorstep" (cited by Hardy 14-15). Grierson also notes that the early documentary filmmakers were concerned about the way the world was going and wanted to use all the tools at hand to push the public towards greater civic participation. With the success of Drifters, Grierson was able to further his ideas, but rather than directing other films, he devoted his time
Analyzing a Scene: Hitchcock and the Male Gaze There is a scene in Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) in which the leading lady played by Anne Baxter descends an outdoor staircase to the man she loves waiting below. Hitchcock uses a tilted or Dutch angle camera shot to show the descent and he slows the motion of the camera down so that Baxter’s movements are more ethereal and less ephemeral: she remains
War Films Taking Jeanine Basinger at her word would leave us with far fewer war films than we think we have. Basinger is a 'strict constructionist,' accepting as war films only those that have actual scenes of warfare (Curley and Wetta, 1992. p. 8; Kinney, 2001, p. 21). That means that the four films that will be considered here, and especially the two World War II films, are not war films.
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now