The classic movies have a strange place in my heart that goes back to my film class during my undergrad days. Monday and Wednesdays were spent learning about mise-en-scene and the importance of lighting. My Fridays, however, were spent sleeping in the back of the theater while movies like Alfred Hitchcock and Robocop played (you try watching movies in the dark during a 9am Friday class!).
So #59 on the 101 list is to watch 25 classic movie which I started last night with a showing of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
The story is about an advertising executive mistaken for a spy and a murderer, chased across the country while falling in love with a mysterious woman. Not exactly the shoot-em-up spy movies like James Bond or the Bourne Identity but it has a charm on its own.
For instance, I did notice that there were some action scenes that didn't contain any music when I was expecting to hear it. Emotions can be influenced by the use and type of music used in the scene. That wasn't the case here. And it worked really well because the silence adds to the suspense. The moments before the crop duster came kept building up the expectation that something was about to happen. It was just a matter of when.
And a random cinematic term: From Wikipedia
"A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise." In the case of North by Northwest, the MacGuffin was the film containing government secrets.
