Alfred Hitchcock
Intrigo Internazionale

"In North by Northwest, the girl sends Cary Grant to a meeting where, as we know, someone will attempt to kill him. In this case, a cliché would be to show the man waiting on a street corner, illuminated by a streetlamp, with the asphalt glistening from the recently fallen rain; then it shifts to a shot of a face peering out from a window, followed by one of a black cat walking close to the wall. And here comes a black limousine. I say no. I set the scene in an open field, with the sun shining and nowhere to hide. And what kind of atmosphere did I create? A sinister one. There’s no sign indicating where the threat might come from, but ultimately it arrives in the form of a crop-dusting plane. Someone from inside the plane shoots at Cary Grant and he can't hide anywhere." (Alfred Hitchcock).

Here it is, one of the greatest cinematic revolutions. With "North by Northwest," Alfred Hitchcock redraws the contours of suspense and tension, literally throwing out everything that was taken for granted until this film. He overturned the clichés of narrative storytelling: he creates a dark, worrying, distressing, unsustainable atmosphere without using any of the classic action cinema expedients, no chases, no trailings, by simply leaving a man, Cary Grant, in the middle of a field of grain for 7 minutes, waiting for something to happen. Indeed, but what?, the audience asks. Through masterful camera movements, Alfred Hitchcock manages to create suspense through long shots with the camera, reverse shots, dolly shots, more or less rapid tracking shots (132 shots!), the slightly bewildered face of a great Cary Grant, yet the viewer, tense in anticipating the event, is only watching a shot of a field of grain. Genius, an ABC of directing.

Then there’s the story, perfect and clean, as only a script by Ernest Lehman could be, harmonious like a fatal chase on Mount Rushmore (meticulously reconstructed in the studio), with the explicit sexual metaphor closing the film (a train entering a tunnel), with lines and amorous innuendos from the top of the class, with a rhythm that never slows from start to finish, with intrigue (as the title suggests), spies, false identities, and those masterful 7 minutes, that have made "North by Northwest," the greatest film of Alfred Hitchcock, as reported by all the most prestigious critics for the past 40 years.

The way of conceiving tension will never be the same. The fear of the unknown, the backbone of so many modern films, has ancient roots. It starts here. And who said that to make a revolution requires a lot of time, when you know how to do it, 7 minutes are enough.