North By Northwest: Opening Scene Analysis

    The scene I decided to analyze for this film is the very opening scene, which serves as a foundation for the entirety of the plot. In the film, Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an ad man (think Mad Men era), who is mistaken for George Kaplan, a man wanted and on the run. Roger is kidnapped as a result but manages to flee. Roger spends the remainder of the story trying to convince his acquaintances that he is telling the truth about his kidnapping and also trying to regain his identity.

   The movie opens up with shots of various people around Manhattan.

Including Hitchcock's recurring cameo in his movies.

The opening shot is meant to symbolize losing one's self in the crowd, especially if one considers the era the movie was produced in. This was just a few years after the Red Scare when one didn't know whether your co-worker or neighbor was a Communist. This is also made poignant in light of the plot involving Communism. It creates sort of a claustrophobic feel despite the large scale shots. This ties in with Roger feeling that he's constantly being watched and pursued. He's no longer just a face in the crowd. He's a wanted man.

However, the main reason I chose this film is due to how the entire plot revolves around the very character of Roger; the character's character. As the story opens, the first scene establishes that Roger is a liar and a drunk. Hence, when he escapes from his kidnappers and tries to convince the proper authorities of the fact, nobody believes him. When he takes them to the Townsend home, Mrs. Townsend notes that Roger imagined the whole thing as he'd simply had one too many.

When we first meet Roger, he's holding a conference of sort with his secretary. And it is through their conversation that we get a sense of who Roger really is. 

He tells his secretary to send candy to one of his dalliances and to lie to her. When the secretary points out that he's already used that same phrase in a past card, he decides to use another one. His moral character has already begun to take shape with no plot exposition. The dialogue reveals who Roger is. The plot serves to help him grow.

He then lies to a man that his secretary is "a very sick woman" so that they can steal the cab right from under him. When the secretary reproaches him for lying, he states that he probably made the man feel heroic. This is comparable to Roger's love interest in the film Eve (played by Eva Marie Saint) lying to Roger to perform a heroic act; although she does the complete reverse by lying to have somebody else (in this case Roger) feel anything but heroic.

He then tells the secretary to set up a date with his mother and to inform her that he's already drunk two martinis and she needn't bother to sniff his breath. We come to understand that Roger is perhaps touched by this poison, which only fuels into people's suspicion when he is caught drunk driving after his escape. Though there is a bigger force at play in having Roger becoming the victim in the film, it is his moral character that works against him.