This film is one of Hitchcock's masterpieces of "Master of Suspense". The stylistic characteristics of Hitchcock's films are more or less expressed in this film. Hitchcock is a master of using visual images to present stories, especially good at mobilizing various film methods to organize suspense.
At the beginning of the film, Thornhill summons the waiter in the restaurant, and the waiter is summoning Kaplan for others. Two unrelated matters are naturally entangled into a ball through a few related actions, and the protagonist has a dual identity from then on. Here, Hitchcock used a skilful and concise technique, through a misunderstanding, to construct the important suspense of the whole film from the beginning. Then, Hitchcock led to the leading suspense of the film-the desperate struggle between spy organizations and anti-espionage agencies.
Hitchcock stepped up doubts step by step, adding more weight to the suspense, and the tension of this suspense became stronger and stronger, and the audience's heartstrings became more and more tense: villa interrogation... highway distress... police detective investigation. So far, there was an ups and downs, the tension eased slightly, but the suspense became thicker. In a scene in the United Nations Building, Hitchcock made the protagonist into a murder suspect with concise and clear movements and ingenious and natural misunderstandings, and was pursued by both police and spies. At this point in the plot development, Kaplan must play. So Hitchcock simply opened the box to show the bottom: Kaplan is purely fictitious. However, after the box was opened, the audience found that there was a small box inside: the Intelligence Bureau had another eyeliner undercover in the spy network. It's really a wave of unrest, one wave after another, the waves are treacherous and confusing. Townsend’s suspicion and Kaplan’s suspicion were unraveled one after another, but Hitchcock immediately shook out an inside suspicion. This time he was not in a hurry to untie the knot, and even refused to reveal his name.
Thornhill meets the mysterious girl Eve on the train. She not only resolves Thornhill's dangers, but also introduces him to Gentle Town and wins his favor. However, a note revealed her mystery to the audience: She led Thornhill to the wilderness for Van Dam, causing him to be almost killed by a plane. However, she did not harm Thornhill in the hotel, allowing her to chase down to the auction room. Hitchcock's suspicion is here, making the audience feel like the protagonist, feeling indistinguishable, love and hate towards her. Enough of this doubt, Hitchcock did not hesitate to come up with the mystery: it turns out that she is the eyeliner. After piercing this layer of paper, the plot impulse caused by Kaplan has decayed, and Thornhill loses the reason to deal with the spy, so Hitchcock cleverly and naturally turns Thornhill’s love for Eve from hatred to Eve. , With the sail of love as the driving force, continue to promote the development of the plot. Thornhill cooperated with Eve to "execute" Kaplan and finally lifted Thornhill from his dual identity.
So far, the tension of the plot seems to be insufficient, and Hitchcock raised another suspense-Eve's identity was exposed and faced death threats. The audience agreed with Eve at this time, and their newly stretched heart suddenly became tense. Surrounding the sinister situation of the hero and heroine, the film has reached its final climax. The chasing and fighting on the mountain-top statue was so dangerous that the audience was almost breathless with nervousness. With a "boom" gunshot, the spy was wiped out, and the plot was broken, and the tension was lost. It was rainy and sunny, and the love between the hero and heroine finally came to an end. The last set of shots in the film is quite poetic. Hitchcock used the film's unique montage method to let Thornhill pull Eve from the cliff directly into the upper bunk of the train box. The love between the two began to sprout from here. In the sweet embrace, the train went into the tunnel, and Hitchcock finally used a sultry metaphor to make the film more romantic and more charming. Tension, suspense, humor, and romance are everything in the film. How can the audience not feel hearty and satisfied when they step out of the theater? Hitchcock is worthy of being a game spectator and a master of his music.
Hitchcock has its own set of "McGuffin theory" for making films. He tends to weaken the theme and motivation of the film as much as possible, and concentrate on weaving the suspense caused by this. The film is a Western anti-special theme film, but the anti-espionage struggle is placed in the background, and even the key target of the tracking-the miniature film is also blurred. Only at the end of the film does it appear lightly. The protagonist is also an ordinary non-spy. People-advertisers. However, with the spy battle as a prelude, Hitchcock has been able to derive countless suspenses, large and small. The old suspense is broken, and new suspense is born. This suspense of large and small is intertwined vertically and horizontally, making the film appear mysterious. , So that the audience's mood is turbulent, always in a state of excitement. Hitchcock's suspense is not only different in tension, but also full of changes in form. In this film, around Eve, Hitchcock first sets up a suspense behind the scenes-inside line suspense; when the suspense is obvious, it turns it into forward suspense-the identity is exposed and the situation is precarious, so the heroine There is always a scene on the body, which closely attracts the audience.
Hitchcock is very cinematic, and his pictures are novel and unique and mean. There are no shortage of amazing scenes in his works, and there are several such classic scenes in this film. In the passage of the plane hitting a person, he first used several cars from small to large and then from large to small to show Thornhill's anxiety and to tease the audience's sense of expectation. When the audience was tired and only paying attention to the ground, he made the plane suddenly pounce down like a vulture. The plane dived again and again, and Thornhill ran wildly in the wilderness. He could escape everywhere, but there was nowhere to hide. Hitchcock created an extremely typical "wilderness horror" scene here. The chase of Mount Rushmore is not only full of dynamic and thrilling beauty, but can also be regarded as a metaphor: the stone statues of the four presidents of the United States signify order and stability, and evil spies built a nest on their heads, but they fell to death in the end. At its feet.
Hitchcock's pictures are often endowed with a certain meaning, which requires the viewer to read and understand carefully. He calls this method of using composition and video to convey information as "pure film." In this film, Thornhill is suspected of killing. Hitchcock shot him from the top of the United Nations building in embarrassment. The United Nations was the defender of the world order, but now it has become a place where disorderly secret agents kill people. At the beginning of the film, Thornhill was the boss of a company giving orders, and Hitchcock used the following mid-range shots to describe his aggressive actions. At this time, however, he lost his confidence, like a headless fly. Hitchcock used a remote camera looking down to highlight his insignificance, isolation, and panic. In a scene in the auction hall, Thornhill and Van Damme fought face to face, Eve sat symbolically among them, Van Damme's hand was on her shoulder, which was both an intimacy and a secret threat ( You can pinch her neck at any time).
But when Van Damme learned that Thornhill was coming from her residence, he pulled his hand back. There is no verbal hint here. Van Damme’s suspicion of Eve is expressed entirely through close-ups of his hands, and Eve is sandwiched between Between the two, the danger of isolation and helplessness can be deeply felt on the screen. After the fake shooting, Thornhill and Eve met in the forest. This is the most beautiful scene in the film: the bright sunshine and the swaying tree shadows give people a beautiful association, Thornhill and Eve. At both ends of the frame of the substation, the two looked at each other for a long time, Thornhill took a few steps to the right, Eve also walked to the left, and finally the two joined together. This is a turning point in the relationship between the two, and it heralds a happy ending. Hitchcock uses film methods to describe it lyrically, adding to the film's romantic sentiment.
Hitchcock’s suspense is remarkable. His film methods are new, gimmicky, and charming. However, he is not only a master of popular film techniques. In addition to the superficial thrilling stories, his works often have rich Deep connotation. Since the 1950s, serious critics have always made new discoveries when they interpret their works with new viewpoints and new methodologies. This film is a research example of Hitchcock's film. Researchers have discovered that the inversion and recognition of identity is one of the themes of Hitchcock's movies, and it is also the root cause of his suspense. The dual identities of the hero and heroine in this film are quite interesting. The double pursuit associated with this is often the main frame of Hitchcock's structured movies. This double pursuit is usually reversible. Among the police, criminals, and the protagonist being pursued, the latter is the fulcrum of structural change. In the film, after Thornhill decided to cooperate with the Intelligence Agency, his identity suddenly reversed, from prey to hunter, and his actions changed from escape to attack. This Hitchcock situation has appeared in his series of works such as "39 Steps" (1935), "The Destroyer" (1936), and "Overseas Commissioner" (1940).
Psychoanalysis is one of the most common methods used by western film critics to interpret Hitchcock's films. A scene in the auction hall of this film is considered to be a classic scene of narcissism and exhibitionism in Hitchcock's film: Thornhill deliberately disrupted the order of the venue and attracted everyone’s attention, and was finally taken away by the police, thus cleverly escaped To chase and kill. Thornhill's peeping outside the window of Van Dam's Lair can also be regarded as an appearance of his voyeurism. Hitchcock has a strong sense of gender, which is reflected in his works consciously or unconsciously. He often looks at women from the eyes of men, and men’s anxiety is often caused by women’s threats. His typical heroines are not good wives and mothers in the family, but are often unmarried young women who are beautiful, mysterious, scheming, and wandering around. They often put the male protagonist in a castrated position where power is taken away. For this reason, they are often punished, and in the end they are always dominated and overridden by men.
This film does not show this mode. Because Hitchcock's films are so attractive that viewers are naturally involved, even female audiences tend to agree with his sexuality. Only Western feminists challenge him. Hitchcock’s films are also objects of interest to structuralists and semiotics. For example, Peter Warren used Plop’s analysis of Russian fairy tales to analyze the plot structure of the film, but this is already within the scope of theoretical discussion. Rather than art appreciation.
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