Recently, I watched the film North By Northwest with my film class. The film is about a man who is mistaken for a government agent, and is chased by a group of spies.This film was made in 1959, and considering the time period it was produced in, it is a good movie. However, in present day, there are multiple things that could have been improved. One thing I noticed a lot was the sound. There were many scenes lacking foley, or only had about half of the foley noises that they needed. However, they never failed to add in a very dramatic, over the top noise every time some was punched in the face. Which was quite often.
Another element that could've been changed was they way they shot the scene where the two main characters, Roger and Eve, climb down Mount Rushmore. This scene was supposed to be very dramatic, but the way that it was shot and edited made it seem very slow. Most of the shots were either wide or medium, and the shots were extremely long. To give the scene more fast paced and action-packed, one simple thing to change would be to switch shots quickly, and have a wider variety of shots, including more close ups or moving shots.
Overall, I thought the movie was good for it's time. However, nowadays there are a lot of improvements needed. While watching, I found myself spending most of the movie just pointing out things that I would change.
"North by Northwest." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.
