How Hitchcock Turned the ‘Crop Duster Attack’ into a Cinematic Icon | North by Northwest
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
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Today we look at how Alfred Hitchcock created the iconic Crop Duster sequence in North by Northwest. We’ll look at how Hitchcock came up with the idea, how it was scripted, planned, and storyboarded, subjective vs. objective cinematography, concealing the threat of the crop duster, utilizing material, and who exactly was shooting at Thornhill.
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This video essay was written, edited, and narrated by Tyler Knudsen.
Sources:
Hitchcock at Work by Bill Krohn
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Hitchcock’s Notebooks
Destination Hitchcock - The Making of North by Northwest
Cinephilia & Beyond - bit.ly/2Ezz5aF
Hitchcock at the NFT (1969) - Eyes on Cinema - bit.ly/2EvL6ig
Hitchcock on the Crop Duster scene - Eyes on Cinema - bit.ly/2pK2CG4
Fashion Photo History - bit.ly/2sl43yi
Creative Screenwriting (2000) - "North by Northwest": An Interview with Ernest Lehman - bit.ly/2EjqqWC
Sequencing the North by NorthWest Crop Dusting Scene - bit.ly/2nUBbZ1
Music by Epidemic Sound
My biggest irrational fear is being in the middle of an open field and in the distance seeing someone running towards me.
It follows...
Relatable fear
I had this exact thought when I was out stargazing one time
Is it based on a night are you had at some point, or a scene in a story or film? Where did it come from?
@@melissasaint3283 Growing up near farmland and seeing big empty fields and thinking how scary it would be caught in the middle of one
Cary Grant looks classy even while running, chased by an aeroplane
...and dusty.
Cary Grant could not NOT look classy. Yum.
He may be the classiest gentleman of the entire 20th century. Think of another, I dare you to find one...
He was the influence for Sean Connery's portrayal of James Bond for a reason.
Cary had been a acrobat in his teens, after running away from home and joining a variety-show acting troupe and was plenty athletic.
I definitely wouldn't call it his best, but North by Northwest may be my favorite Hitchcock film and videos like this help illustrate what makes it so great
Seriously - you're gonna go with that - "Curated" ? Does it REALLY have to be "Curated " ? Why can't you just put it out there for consideration. You did not "Curate it. You collected it off You Tube (or where ever ) Sigh ....
You just HAVE to ruin an other wise nice video that has some great good info ...
It's so much fun
EXACTLY! The instruction delivered by this video is a priceless, awesome film, grand master class!
Jack agrees with Jack. I still wouldn’t call it my favorite but it’s in both my top 3 of his best and one of my favorites from Alfred
I must concurr! Indeed.
The scene where Thornhill escapes from the auction house (by using the crowd’s reaction to his antics) is very similar to a scene Hitchcock filmed 20 years earlier in The 39 Steps.
Also The Third Man.
I also noticed that Mandy. Well spotted:)
I love the 39 steps one of my favorite films 😊 growing up in the Central Valley of Cali found it cool that the crop duster scene was done in my backyard .
"There's something menacing about open spaces."
Just like the Overlook Hotel.
I recall some great filmmaker remarking that those interested in becoming a directors can save a lot of money by simply studying Hitchcock instead of spending it on film school, because therein is all they'll ever need to know about the craft. So true. What you show here is evidence of that. Liked and subscribed.
It was William Freidkin.
Thank you for this. Very informative. One tedious note: North by Northwest was shot in Vistavision (or "lazy eight"), which is technically still 35mm but has twice the image size. Tat increase in resolution made it an excellent format for landscapes, and wide, texture filled compositions (see the Monument Valley shots in The Searchers by john Ford). Hitchcock used this on several films and the higher resolution allowed him to use (among other things) the ultra wide shots (like the high angle of Cary Grant escaping from the UN Building) which might not have registered visually in standard 35 mm.
Do you have more info on this or other motion pictures by Hitchcock» Very informative.
@@gs032009 I'd suggest some Googling on Hitchcock and special effects, or Hitchock and visual effects. He really was a master of all things cinema, and his grasp of techniques (matte paintings, model work, rear-projection, and all the other trickery) was extraordinary and fearless. The Birds is an excellent example of him pulling out all the stops, both visual and audible.
One of my all-time faves ... thanks for giving me an excuse to watch it again - with more insight!
EXTRAORDINARILY INSIGHTFUL! GRAND MASTER CLASS IN CINEMA CREATION.
I wish i could watch this movie again for the first time
There's a number of movies that I wish I could see for the first time. When I was younger I would think about if it was possible for that to happen through hypnosis, but I would not want to be the guinea pig for that.
It's always a good day when Tyler drops a new video.
Hollywood's golden era of movie making is timeless, with a legacy of classics to take us back in time.
Isn't the 50s and 60s considered the silver age ?
One of my favorite movies!
Very interesting analysis and technique discussion. I was 11 at the time and didn't see the film until a few years later. Visited Mount Rushmore at that time on a family vacation to Colorado. I still remember walking from the broad flat parking lot into the cafeteria where the shooting scene took place. It makes watching the film all the more powerful having been there. Thanks
Great scene but this also recalls a favorite Crow T. Robot line: "This is so NOT Illinois!"
This was a great and informative clip. I especially liked the part were you discussed the subjective/objective methods. You mention Seven as being influenced by the cropduster scene, but how about James Bond movies. North by Northwest clearly influenced those movies quite a bit.
Yes, Bond's shooting down the strafing helicopter in "From Russia with Love" comes to mind.
Yes, I think beyond FRWL, the cropduster scene is one of the most important scenes in history because it begat all modern big ticket popcorn action sequences--spectacle 1st, logic second--not just Bond but Raiders, Die Hard, Avengers--everything. Wish the essay had touched on this even a little.
@@RogerOThornhill Absolutely--Spielberg is very obviously influenced by Hitchcock in many ways, but framing shots such as this are a really clear example. Building suspense organically and filming it beautifully. But Hitchcock let scenes breathe more than most, too.
There is this scene in Arizona Dream from 1993 where the character played by Vincent Gallo reenacts the crop duster scene on the stage of a local talent show. He is totally serious about it but the performance gets to the audience as a joke, so the laughter majes him angry and sad.
I wish I could stand at a bus stop as elegantly as Cary Grant does. I also wish I could run like him whilst dressed for an important meeting. Top notch.
I have only watched the first five seconds and am already excited, because any new video by Cinema Tyler is a much-anticipated event, and always good.
Close Encounters towards the end there is the crop duster threatening the main characters climbing Devil's Tower.
That scene is so good and iconic that anytime there is a retrospective or history of Hollywood film making the part with Cary Grant taking a dive eating dirt as a biplane flies behind him is used.
This sequence is a dry run for the shower scene in Psycho.
As a general rule, when Hitch is having fun, I am having fun. N by NW, Strangers on a Train, Psycho etc. for example.
Two similar scenes come to mind: "From Russia with Love" Bond vs. strafing helicopter, and "Night Moves" strafing floatplane over open ocean.
Someone else mentioned there were a few such scenes in "Breaking Bad." My favorite is the one where Walter tells Declan, "Say my name."
Great points
Don't forget Ernie and Bert in the biplane in _Follow That Bird!_
Breaking Bad enjoyed visiting this meme on many occasions: empty prairie, men in suits.
This channel keeps putting a smile on my face.
The storyboard drawings look more like Greg Peck than Cary Grant. Funny
I'm convinced Cary Grant would've been the greatest 007 of all time
Hitchcock is the father of the modern visual storytelling
thank you very much Cinema Tyler take care.
This was always one of my most favorite Hitchcock movies. the only scene which I found annoying was the crop duster crashing into the tanker as it made no sense to me.
Sure, the probability for a crash is not zero but it was an widely open space, no bad weather and no attack of any kind at the plane not hearing any engine trouble.
As this documentary showed, Hitchcock had a variety of impulsive silly ideas which luckily got all dropped, resp. someone talked him out of them. But they could have truly come up with a tiny better idea for the plane crash to make at least remotely sense. This one scene was the only one in the movie where Hitchcock asked too much for the suspension of disbelief.
Besides that a wonderful, enjoyable movie and showing Grants great comedian talent which I also appreciated a lot in Operation Petticoat, Houseboat and Father Goose.
This is one of the best and least pretentious examination of Hitchcock. Excellent job!!!
Also the city in the back is Bakersfield, CA!
That's odd. 7:42 shows Hitchcock looking through the viewfinder. But the told Francois Truffaut and Peter Bogdanovich that he never looked through the viewfinder!
You do such a great job with the Full Metal Jacket, and the Apocalypse Now videos! I’d love to see this in the Hitchcock movies too!!
12:25 Shows that explicitly paid homage to that scene also include "Roadies". I'd say implicitly might include "Casino", as Rothstein is standing out in the Nevada desert all by himself dressed in a business suit telling the audience that he has has a 50-50 chance of getting murdered. He survives, but then Pesci's character later gets murdered in a corn field. Wow.
Damn man, this was an incredible video. Awesome job.
EXACTLY! It is an incredible, awesome GRAND MASTER CLASS in movie creation.
For me the first time I saw the cropdusting sequence was probably through homage in Indiana Jones The Last Crusade, one of my fav movies, and I never realised that it was an homage till today when I watched North by Northwest
Great video! I love this.
I saw this film the first time in 1980.
To this day when I see a crop dusting plane from my workplace windows, I think of this scene! LOL, each time, I am just a little bit unnerved...
In "Prime Cut" (1972) Sissy Spacek and Lee Marvin are chased by a harvesting machine instead of a crop-dusting plane.
thanks i have been looking for this film name for a while now, i could barely remember it , and in my memory it was Clint Eastwood and John Huston (no idea why), so it became hard to search for, film from 70's with Pigs in it :).
Awesome as always, Tyler! Any chance of you covering Strangers On A Train? You sometimes delve into the director/novelist relationship in these videos, and Hitchcock and Highsmith always interested me.
When on filmschool in the eighties, I analized this scene on the aspect time of daylight and it gives proof of the possibility to shoot discontinuous during a sunny day with shadows in a random order. The only way to observe this is to locate the shadows in each shot. The conclusion: it doesn't matter where the sun is (it's your only key light source). The viewers brain is not catching the changes of direction which could be sometimes 6 hours (90 degrees). This was a great lesson, which nowadays pops up when confronted with a governmental artist impression of a city reconstruction, where the with a computer created artist impression of a street with a park is lighted with the sun (key light) positioned in the north (from the back of the viewpoint), which is in the real world completely impossible. Nobody will mention, until you tell them the fake news.
Another revelation was the reading of the script. It popped up on internet some decade ago. The script was exactly what the movie shows. I wondered then, who was the genius, the scriptwriter or Herr Hitchcock the director?
One of my favorite films. This scene was shot near my home town of Bakersfield, CA, 110 miles north of LA. By the way, do you know why the opening title backgrounds (including Leo the Lion) were Green? Thanks! Great Stuff!
James Bond also made references to the crop duster scene.
The Helicopter chase in From Russia With Love being the most obvious reference to spot, but also Licence To Kill, where Bond is in an open space during the climactic tankertruck-chase and at some point Pam Bouvier comes flying in a crop duster and throws dust onto the men chasing Bond.
I remember it well, that was a close call.
great work!
MUBI is free if you study film or some related field by the way. I'm a media studies student and I got it.
Thank you for this very much; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The supposed storyboards were definitely done after filming for the purpose of publicity, as you point out Bill Krohn says in his book Hitchcock at Work (which is first rate, by the way). I say this only partly because Krohn is extremely trustworthy; beyond that, the drawings match the finished film far too accurately to have preceded it, much, much more accurately than any actual storyboards I’ve ever seen.
Thanks again.
did 007 completely blow this scene out of proportion with Russia With Love's helicopter scene?
or is this a "nothing beats the original" thing?
It was a good scene on its own, but definitely was a nod to this one.
Fantastic and engaging work once again.
Well done, C Tyler.
When will you make a 'long series' on Hitchcock, chronologically, say starting with Sabotage, and do not forget, a deeper analysis of North by NW!:-)))
CinemaTyler, what is the music you have playing with your voice over? I like it
That scene from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 where nebula chases down Gamora was inspired by this scene.
Outstanding. Nuf' said.
Filmed near pond rd. outside delano, ca
Awesome video!
All that analysis without mentioning agoraphobia. That was the essence.
Oh, so THAT's why the plane crashed. I've flown enough small planes myself to know that they don't just go crashing into trucks whenever convenient.
Please do more Hitchcock vidios!
Amazing!!!!
Just signed up for Mubi under your referral link. Cheers!
One of the best videos i've ever seen !
Maybe you could do something about Hitchcock's "Psycho" ?
Hitchcock directed The 39 Steps (20 years before?) in 1935 - I haven't watched it yet but from the theatre story I'm quite sure there is a plane attack scene which is almost the same. Actually, the whole story seems very similar... can anyone confirm? btw, nice video!
No plane attack in 39 Steps
Very good .Congratulations for the job.Lots of polemics here about the improbability to kill a man from a plane ....But thats not the question here!We know its not serious.Its just a adventure movie.But a car with killers coming into this countryside would be so common.The most important in that scene is" How to film it to create a mood and emotions in peoples mind" ..And thats what you explain here!The only thing i would know about this scene is the name of Cary Grant stand-in!
Hi Tyler. My understanding re: storyboarding the crop duster sequence. The scuttlebutt in the business is that Hitchcock always noodled little thumbnail storyboards (as do most directors) but that those (as in the case of most directors) are not considered "crew-worthy". I heard that Mentor Huebner was often brought-in to polish the thumbnails and produce a proper production board, often in the production office, and sat-in on the briefs. Where it gets interesting, and where the confusion may have arisen, is that Mentor Huebner was asked by Hitch and the studio to RE-DO some of the storyboarded sequences for promotion flyers when the movie was released, and those re-dos are most of what we see today of the boards from North by Northwest: They are distinguished by the fact that they are unusually detailed and painterly - with astounding likenesses of Grant. Specifically, he was asked to redraw several of the crop duster sequence storyboards and several of the "Vandamm house exterior" sequence at the end. This is why those storyboard panels are exquisite pieces of artwork (unlike many of the working boards from Mentor Huebner on the same film, which are always excellent by much less refined) drawn in charcoal, with shading, and representing near-perfect likenesses of Cary Grant. This level of artistry is rarely shown (and quite useless) on storyboards, even storyboards from Mentor Huebner at his then young age. The publication of those storyboards is thought by several storyboard artists to be the reason why storyboarding art suddenly became a trend, in Hollywood. Up to that time, they were not really as commonplace as they became in the '60s and '70s, and onward. Since you reference "Hitchcock's Notebooks" several working storyboards can be seen in the book that better reflect the "normal" level of work involved. Harold Michaelson also provides a good look at what a standard storyboard artist from the time was expected to produce as a level of work. Analyzing stoyboards is a very difficult thing to do for most people because some expert understanding of drawing is required to see what's what in each frame. The above information is mostly based on intense discussions among storyboard artists, including Michaelson, and including people who knew Huebner very well. Also based on notes from Huebner's widow who kept a website with Mentor's work for many years. As he got more experienced, Mentor Huebner clearly made it more and more of a habit to render all his "keyframes" in heavy, detailed charchoal, but continued to also produce rougher storyboard panels for the blow-by-blow details of the sequences he drew. Most people are unaware of the fact that storyboard artists use different techniques on a single storyboard to distinguish between day to day sequencing (done for expediency) and occasional key-frame art. At any rate, it's certain that Bill Krohn is dead wrong. Of course, a complex floor plan diagram was also used, and again, that's standard procedure on a complex sequence -- sometimes a floor plan is used to give the storyboard artist his instructions for the scene. One does not exclude the other at all... But his assumption that the floor plan sketch is incompatible with the existing storyboard is wrong. A scene like the crop duster sequence would NEVER have been filmed without a storyboard, and most likely several passes at a storyboard, probably including Hitch's own sketches at times, or and Huebner's -- in fact, storyboards are usually revised up to the last minute on set by whoever is standing there with a pen. The discussion about memos indicating what order script notes came in, and who wrote what are moot because all this stuff is a back and forth process (what Ridley Scott calls "an organic process") with endless tweaking and fiddling, and a memo will never account for all the work that's gone into conceiving, then writing, then storyboarding, then rewriting a scene and everything in between. A lot of the minutia of the process of storyboarding is often lost on people who retell the events. And thanks for making these extraordinary videos of yours - it's better than film school. Great job!
Very informative, thank you.
02:30 It's the fucking dad from I Was a Teenage Werewolf!!!!
Wow! Great video! I subscribed!
Yes, definitely Hitchcock's best film, if only for this scene and the dinner aboard the "20th Century Limited". Hitchcock hated working off a controlled sound stage, which unfortunately, gave us several rather poorly set outdoor scenes. One of my two most highly regarded films.
"That plane's dusting crops where there ain't no crops." I get that this works to make us suspicious of the plane's intent, but why indeed was it releasing dust there? Was that a test run before using it on Thornhill?
Those crop dusters had it in for King Kong too. Always had misgivings about biplanes. I mean, if a plane will fly with only one wing, the other wing can only be a sign of evil.
@gordon mathew BI-PLANE fighters, aka 'crop-dusters.'
There is NOTHING wrong with the model. I’ve seen NBNW projected on a large screen twice. I also Associate Produced a Laserdisc of the film for Criterion in the early 90’s. Many seasoned filmgoers I know never knew it was a model.
Hey Tyler! Do you have a high quality jpg of that continuity photo of Grant at the cornfield? There's a huge online debate/discussion about his exact suit and tie--and this looks like it would be one of the best photos to solve some of our questions. I searched Google and can't find this photo.
I think you have subjective muddled up. In your example in the cornfield, you say that the shots of Grant in the cornfields are subjective. But they're not. Subjective shots are Grant a.k.a. Thornhill's point-of-view shots. If there were only subjective shots, we'd see none of Thornhill himself, just everything through his eyes.
A beautiful study -- thanks and kudos!. Will put my spoilsport comments in a different language.
Eszena hau zinez ezagunena eta kognozentziarra inoiz gurtu den sillestenetakoa da. Nerabeetan lehenengoa ikusteak oso ondo ikusi zuen, baina ez du zentzurik bere onera iristean. Zergatik hegazkin bat? Zergatik galtzen du pilotuaren suak Thornton nahita eta zergatik kamikazea amaitzen da?
Zergatik da hegazkina uzten duen laborantza? Pilotoaren jokaerak ez du zentzurik nik esan dezaketenik.
There’s a point before the crop duster where Cary Grant gets blown by a dirty gust due to a high speed lorry passing. The back of his hair briefly lifts, the front of his hair not at all! That would never happen with me, my hair would be thrown into complete disarray !
I’ve always thought Cary Grant had the most immaculate and ideal hairline. ( not like mine ). And NOTHING could disturb it !
Eva Marie Saint in this movie was such a gorgeously beautiful woman.
i don't recall this scene 0:10 from Yojimbo neither Sanjuro
where's it from?
Ze Ninguem The Sword of Doom (1966)
Reminds me of the biplane crash in 1917.
Using the crop duster as a platform to dispose of Roger Thornhill doesn't make much sense (it's some time before they fire a shot at him, so what exactly is 'buzzing' him about?), but it is very memorable.
I used to love and revere North By Northwest but my most recent viewing of it left me cold. To be fair, this movie works best as an entertainment in a large theater, but given the chance to actually think about the plot, there are many things in it that make little sense, as you point out. Distractions and fast-moving segues and other such "Mcguffins" which Hitchcock uses as part of his slight-of-hand-tricks bag to make you forget these inconsistencies or preposterous plot points used to work on me, but not so much anymore. To his credit, Hitch knew he was doing this going in, and never expected the plots to stand up to scrutiny. The disorientation of the hero and the audience were his main concerns, and I think the movies hold up in that sense, anyway.
Yes, I completely agree with you. Herrman's opening credits music effectively says: "Just enjoy the ride." The film is about having as much fun as possible and this is not a grounded tightly constructed thriller.
I think this was all part of Hitchcock's theory of "tension and release." The crop duster scene follows a rather bland encounter in the field with the man on the road. Hitch needed to ramp up the action at that point, and what better way to do it than a "strafing run" by an airplane. But yes, the more I see the film the more holes I find. As Hitch often said, "It's only a movie."
Haha. A tornado would have been the worst deus ex machina and Mcguffin all in one, of all time...
Have always liked the scene, but I have to ask: "A bus pulls up to pick up one guy in the middle of a vast and desolate area of farming country somewhere in Indiana?" I really don't think so.
Actually, if you've ever taken a bus trip across country on a Greyhound bus you will frequently be taken on roundabout roads to nowhere to pick up one or two people in one-horse towns like Hope, Arkansas, or Sweetwater or Big Spring, Texas, where they don't even have real bus stations, just half abandoned little buildings. So this is actually credible.
David lynch vedeo plese
Haha! Great video! And just after I shot this ad for the Moet Film Fest. Enjoy and Cheers! www.moetfilmfest.com/entry/north-by-southeast#_=_
Unquestionably, one of the most ridiculous premises I’ve ever seen on film. I was a professional pilot for forty years and can tell you that trying to hit a man on the ground with an airplane is not only damned near impossible, but would be exceedingly dangerous for the pilot as the aircraft would certainly be damaged if it ever actually managed to hit the man. If you lured your target to a deserted place, why not just finish him off with a gun.?
I'll tell you why. The whole plane scenario is show biz. The whole scene is improbable. I was in the army in Norfolk, Virginia, when this movie first came out and in a theater on a big screen, it was thrilling. If you want to see reality, catch some of the film noirs from the fifties. North by Northwest, beginning with the title, which is impossible, everything in the film was out of the box. Quite different from The Wrong Man and Psycho. It's an improbable adventure. When I think about it, well, the entire film is absurd. Remember though that art is the fiction that makes the real true. Reel to real. Visually the plane scene is like a nightmare.
@@berkeleyedit7852 Thanks for the response. There's another thing that is kind of implausible; the movie was made near the end of Cary Grant's career and the woman playing his mother appears to be about the same age as he. The first time we saw the movie, my wife commented, "She looks more like his girlfriend than his mother."
@@logancody8841 You can't think too much when it comes to movies or you ruin it for yourself. Films are closer to dreams and dreams are never apparently logical.
@@berkeleyedit7852 I agree about the "films are closer to dreams" part of your comment. However, I think it's more thrilling when a director brings dreams close enough to reality to make them completely feasible. "Jaws" is a great example; you go into the water and a shark eats you. That premise plays to our fears all the way through because it's completely feasible. On the other hand, unless you're a pilot you're not going to recognize the unfeasibility of the "N by NW" airplane scene, so maybe I should just shut up about it. Anyway, thanks for the good comment.
Who cares, I have private pilot license, too..it's Hollywood, Bud...sounds like you need to sit back, and not be so serious..
مثير +مهول.
Shame you diddnt explore theme of agoraphobia
This scene annoys me because it makes no sense! If they wanted him dead, they could have easily killed him...why the heck did they try to shoot him from the sky with a crop duster?!? And since when does a crop duster come equipped with machine guns?!?
Taking serious questions like these… seriously, would result in practically no action movies. Most of such films are illogical or just plain ridiculous.
Russians and Ukrainians are experiencing this with drones in open fields right now.
Why didn't the bad guys just have a dude out there go up to him and shoot him? This whole scene was very cool but made 0 sense to the plot. Just have a dude hiding in the cornfield and have him walk out and shoot thornhill. So stupid
For some reason, for me, Hitchcocks color films always feel kind of robotic and stale. Like, the shots feel dead. No life. Very much matter of fact with nothing special there. I've come to blame this on his over-reliance on the storyboards. He calls the production a bore and in my eyes, it often enough shows in the final product.
When he briefly went back and shot Psycho in Black and White with his TV crew he suddenly felt like he gave a crap and all shots were electrified with intensity.
Now, I have nothing against color film. Many directors knows how to use color amazingly. And there are directors who storyboards everything and gets terrific results. But whenever I start to watch a Hitchcock film in color I feel a sense of dread. Because it always felt like Hitchcock didn't want to bother with the image as long as it was exactly like his beloved storyboards.
But to each their own. I know I have the minority opinion and that has no bearing on the objective quality of the films.
As much as I admire Hitchcock I actually know what you mean here. I've always had a preference for his black and white masterworks such as The 39 Steps and Notorious, and to me the latter is his greatest movie, still.
Why didn't you mention From Russia With Love?
If I see one more slow zoom into a rostrum still I think I'm going to throw up. And the 'dirty' moving overlays on some of the stills are ugly. Shame to spoil top content with naff effects. :)
That's funny
what ?
Vandamm must have been out of his mind. Using a crop duster to kill someone. What a waste of money. All he had to do was send someone in a car with gun which would be 100% successful! Another movie which shows all villains are fools (or, for that matter, Germans in War movies). Villains are much smarter in reality.
Arun Joglekar India
Depends on the villain...
Well, you're right in literal terms, of course. And if you watch the scene more closely, the shooting obviously does not come from a front-mounted machine gun, which suggests that a second person must be on board aiming the gun at Roger Thornhill. Still, it makes for a thrilling and memorable bit of film-making. Getting shot down by an ordinary gunman by the roadside: not so much.
Cary Grant: the last great film actor that lived... except maybe for Gary Oldman.
There only scene I removed from the film
you had me till the seven part. WTF?
My favourite movie and you finally revealed the fate of the missing henchman ...he died in the crop Duster! Thank you.
Like many movie villains, Van Damm was very adept at hiring incompetent henchmen.
The "more menacing-looking car" was Hitchcock's own car, which also shows up in Psycho. The crop duster dusting the corn field where Cary Grant is hiding would have sicken and kill his character pretty quickly since there was arsenic and sodium cyanide as pesticides back then. 11:56 When my sister was 17, she dated a crop duster pilot who, at only 19, had crashed his plane on the job and survived, unfortunately, with head trauma and was never quite right after that. Sad to lose some of your cognitive abilities so young.
questions I have about this scene: 1. Has anyone in the history of the world ever been killed or even injured by an airplane or helicopter hitting them while they or on the ground, while walking or in a vehicle? 2. How would the pilot think they could do it without putting themselves in great danger? 3. Why doesn't anyone ever mention the machine gun bullets that hit the ground next to Thornhill *after* the plane goes by on the second and third passes? Finally, why in the holy f- doesn't the plane pull up and avoid hitting the tanker truck??!?
Roger Thornhill must be thinking "Oh oh I better get the heck outta here!" That's why he is running. He is trying to run away from the plane.
At first I thought he was running to catch the bus and talk to that guy some more. But that's probably wrong now that I think about it.
From this video one might think that.
In the film, it's apparent he's running from the plane.
I refuse to understand why such a video like this would obtain dislikes..
Unhappy people spread their unhappiness in different ways.
Hi, Tyler. Great job. You should be teaching. I always feel smarter after watching one of your videos.
As to the issue of open spaces, I always feel more alienated in the country than when in the city. You can test this by staying at home and talking to no one on the phone until you get lonely. Eventually you can get what is called cabin fever. Like you, I live in a city (Chicago), and being in a crowd is reassuring. In contrast, a rural setting can make you feel alienated and vulnerable, like Cary Grant. Clearly the crop duster is a manifestation of that feeling of alienation.
It all depends on what you are used to and how you grow up as a kid and teen. I have always lived in the suburbs, and while I do not mind crowds my parents and especially my brother-in-law's parents (who grew up as hunters out in the country) cannot stand large crowds at all.