North by northwest blog (finished)

North by Northwest assignment:

In this assignment we are going to be looking at north by northwest and will be focusing on cinematography,sound,editing and mise-en-scene but the main scene we are going to be looking at is the famous crop-duster scene with the section where roger Thornhill is attempting to escape from the plane that is trying to murder him and we are going to be mainly observing the cinematography in this scene out of everything else.
The cinematography is very widely used throughout this whole scene and lots of different types are used such as the beginning shot which is the wide shot and is used to display the main characters surroundings showing what he is seeing along with displaying this sense of loneliness on the main character and isolation as he is located at that point in time in the middle of no-where with nothing around him, this shows his extreme discomfort and the fact that he is far away from the city and home, the two places where he feels the most safe, this wide shot and pan shot is also used to show how long roger is waiting for this mysterious Mr. Kaplan to show up and that he is looking about everywhere for him.

The camera will then zoom in onto Rogers face to  show a close-up shot once the plane is in motion and is attempting to shoot him, this shot is used to to how his shock and fear that the plane is attempting to kill him while he is in the middle of no-where it could also be said that this shot is used to show Rogers sudden realisation of the fact that there is no Kaplan but instead was all a setup for Roger to be murdered, this however is not an extreme close-up but instead is a normal close-up.
Immediately afterwards there is a low-angle shot to show the plane just passing over his head nearly killing him in the process and this shot is especially low-angle to show exactly how close the plane was to decapitating him.
Finally we end this sequence with a tracking show as Thornhill is running away from the plane which is in hot pursuit and thankfully the plane has to pull up just before the bullets which it is firing comes into contact with Roger killing him, all of these "special effects" such as the explosions,gunshots and the plane are not CGI, graphics or animations these are instead all done live and are all done by trained professionals so when you find out that this is all done by the crew and not the computer then this makes the movie much more impressive.
The sound plays a very important role in this whole movie as basically all of the sounds are non-diegetic and there is no music at all, all of the sounds are sounds in which the character "Thornhill" would actually be able to hear himself such as the plane flying overhead or the gas tanker exploding, or even the cars and bus driving past him, the only diegetic sound which you can actually hear during this sequence is the sharp pitches or tunes which play whenever the plane fly really close to thornhill overhead nearly killing him in the process, the use of sound is extremely effective for this movie scene as it puts us in roger Thornhill's situation as we can both see what he is seeing through the use of many P.O.V shots combined with the use of non-diegetic sound really puts us in his shoes and makes us feel like we are in his place and are in imminent danger just as he is.

North by northwest is very much a villain driven story and narrative just like many other thrillers from this movie era were, other great movies which are villain driven from the same time as this can include any of the James Bond movies from back then all the way up to the present day, the way in which you can tell that it is villain driven is that the good guy as such in this movie never really provokes the villain themselves and never will directly attack the villain instead it is just the villain which is always throwing obstacles and traps in the path of the hero which he then has to react to and in the process stop the villain from achieving that which he is attempting to (which is generally something i the way of world domination). In the case of this movie the "hero" is just an ordinary everyday person going about his daily routines until that is when he is mistaken for another person who is an agent working for the government hot on the trail of one of the biggest criminals at which point he is dragged into this insane world of heroes and villains, this is one of Hitchcock's famous devices which he uses in many of the movies which he has made it involves the audience "dipping their toe into the cold water of fear" what this means is that he is scaring the audience in the way that this kind of thing could happen to any one of them just as it happened to Roger Thornhill, this makes them worried that they too could could be going about their daily routine and all of a sudden be dragged into a world of danger.
Another one of Hitchcock's famous devices which he uses extensively in this movie is the concept of "the male gaze", this is the idea that the movie focuses greatly on what males would be looking at themselves, this works well seeing as the main character in this movie is a male the shots and scenes always see the women as objects of male erotic desire which is true within this movie as most of the movie is based around this one woman which Thornhill has fallen in love with and although a large amount of the story involves her she never moves the plot forward herself which is again true for the concept of the "male gaze" in which the plot is only driven forward by males.