Dial H for Hitchcock: North by Northwest at the Rafael...free to the public

When I was a little girl, the only director whose name I was familiar with was Alfred Hitchcock. Though I didn't see any of his signature films of the era in a theater - Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) - I must've seen the trailers, because I was well aware that he made exciting, colorful and glamorous movies.

Psycho (1960) was the first Hitchcock film I saw on the big screen, and it was a far cry from his elaborate VistaVision/Technicolor creations of the mid- to late 1950s. I saw Psycho second-run (I was finally old enough) at the local movie house, the Ritz Theater, with a friend who'd already seen it. Pal that she was, she nudged me just as Arbogast reached the staircase landing and a figure with a knife darted toward him...so, naturally, I shrieked long and loud ...

I was fortunate to be able to see Rear Window when it was re-released into theaters in 1984, but have seen most of Hitchcock's films on television. There's no question that his films come through powerfully on TV, but they were made to be seen on a theater screen.

This past July the Rafael Theater screened the silent version of Blackmail (1929). It was an incredible experience; the film exceeded my expectations in just about every way possible. I was surprised that it was so well-crafted and fluid and that it contained so many components that later became Hitchcock trademarks. Accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra underscored the action and added dimension. And it was thrilling to be surrounded by an appreciative SRO audience.

Six weeks later, at noon on Sunday, September 5, the Rafael presented North by Northwest free to the public as part of its quarterly "Everybody's Classics" series. At 11:40 a.m. the line was long, but good seats were still to be had. By show time Theater 1 was packed and anticipation ran high.

Then Bernard Herrmann's pulsing score began and Saul Bass's title sequence of crisscrossing lines filled the screen. North by Northwest was upon us and in just a few exhilarating moments I was whisked into the adventure.

Possibly Hitchcock's quintessential thrill-ride, North by Northwest incorporates many familiar themes and plot elements - an innocent man accused, a romance complicated by mistrust and betrayal, a double chase - the police after the innocent man and the innocent man after the true villain(s), a backdrop of international espionage...

North by Northwest has been linked to two of Hitchcock's earlier classics, The 39 Steps (1935) and Notorious (1946), but by 1959 the director, at the height of his powers, was in a position to control just about every aspect of his films, much more so than he had been 10 and 20+ years earlier.

He was able to get his favorite actor/star, Cary Grant, for the lead. And though he was unsuccessful in enticing Princess Grace back to the screen as his leading lady, he transformed Academy Award-winning method actress Eva Marie Saint into a stunning and complex femme fatale. James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll and Jessie Royce Landis rounded out his first-rate cast.

Bernard Herrmann, who by now had worked with Hitchcock on several films, was just completing the score for the pilot of "The Twilight Zone" when he began work on North by Northwest. Ernest Lehman wrote a sophisticated and witty script for which he earned an Oscar nomination. Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Burks, production designer Robert F. Boyle (also Oscar-nominated for this film) and others with whom Hitchcock had worked over the years joined the collaboration.

All of these ingredients plus glorious VistaVision and Technicolor added up to create one of Hitchcock's most successful films.

I've seen North by Northwest countless times. I felt like I knew the film well, but to finally see it on a movie screen was to see it with new eyes.

Cary Grant's starpower was almost overpowering - his screen persona was that commanding. What grace, what aplomb! It's not surprising that Bernard Herrmann adjusted his score to match what he described as Grant's "Astaire-like agility."

As for special effects, the crop-dusting set piece with its truck-explosion finale and the moonlit chase across the face of Mount Rushmore have long been legendary. Via the big screen I could almost feel the heat of the explosion and smell the night air of South Dakota. As I watched, I was reminded of how the crop-dusting sequence was echoed in early James Bond films...and of Steven Spielberg's homage in Close Encounters (1977) when he nearly replicated the set design of Hitchcock's night-time Black Hills.

Of course, the suspense seemed magnified, but I also noticed the film's humor seemed more overt and the seduction scenes between Grant and Saint more intimate and...erotic. The film was so precisely paced, with suspense building, then relieved with either humor or romance, then building again...

Afterward, I couldn't help wishing I'd been able to see North by Northwest back in 1959 at the Ritz. The young girl I was then would've thought she'd been on the greatest rollercoaster ride of her life!

Alfred Hitchcock has been widely acknowledged for his amazing ability to, with the artful use of various techniques, easily maneuver an audience's emotions and point of view. It's hard to maintain much distance from Hitchcock's best films. This could be why I often enjoy experiencing his films a bit more than I enjoy understanding them.

As with all Hitchcock films, North by Northwest has a a thing or two going on beneath its glossy surface. But on that Labor Day weekend in San Rafael inside a darkened theater full of laughing, sighing, cheering people, I was a kid again for a while. Happily immersed in a suspenseful, clever, sexy adventure, I didn't even notice that, from the first note of Herrmann's score to the final shot of a darkened railroad tunnel, we were all being swept along as if aboard a sleek 20th Century Limited under the command of a brilliant and crafty locomotive engineer.