Lunch and North by Northwest film screening
Hitchcock’s masterpiece ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) the way it should be seen—on the big screen.
Of course you’ve probably seen the film already on television / DVD etc. But that’s not how Hitchcock designed it. Think about the iconic “crop-duster” scene. It starts with an overhead shot of a desolate, empty field, flat to the horizon. A bus approaches. Out steps Roger O. (“What does the O stand for?”—“Nothing!”) Thornhill (Cary Grant), and waits by the empty road. There’s nothing to see besides the vast fields, shot in glorious VistaVision by cinematographer Robert Burks, reaching into the distance.
Here are Hitchcock’s own words, explaining why this has to be seen on a large screen to be properly appreciated:
Now in movies…the cliché of the man being put on the spot is usually a place of assignation and it takes the form of a figure under a street lamp at the corner of the street with the rain-washed cobbles shining in the night… Somebody is going to come along and bump him off. Well of course, this is such a clichéd thing, you see, that one has to fight shy of it and run as far away from it as one possibly can because it’s all predictable. Now I decide to do something quite different…therefore, I take the loneliest, emptiest spot I can so that there is no place to run for cover, no place to hide, and no place for the enemy to hide.
Do join us for this very special screening, to rejoice in Roger O. Thornhill’s increasingly dramatic and suspenseful predicaments (and to admire the scene-stealing suave sophistication of James Mason as the villain of the piece).
Lunch (£12) is at the Easterbrook Bistro at 12.30.
‘North by Northwest’ film screening (£8) is at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre at 2pm.
Drawing of Alfred Hitchcock by kind permission of Luke Farookhi.