Zum 25. Todestag von Alfred Hitchcock blickt die Zeit auf 25 seiner besten Filme zurück. Quasi ein Einsteigerseminar in fünf Leseminuten. Kann man machen. Auszug:

1959, Der unsichtbare Dritte
Cary Grant gibt den charmanten Werbefachmann, der aus purem Zufall für einen Spion gehalten wird. North by Northwest ist ein verspieltes Stück mit überraschenden Wendungen und Kehrtwendungen, das nie die Spannung verliert. Und natürlich wartet es mit zwei der spektakulärsten Sets der Filmgeschichte auf: dem UN-Gebäude in New York, in dessen Foyer eines der Opfer stirbt, und dem Mount Rushmore Monument, an dem sich die Helden ins Happy End hangeln dürfen.

Zu North by Northwest hat auch mein persönlicher Drehbuchguru William Goldman (bitte verzeiht ihm Dreamcatcher) in seinem extrem unterhaltsamen Werk Adventures in the Screen Trade was zu sagen. Genauer gesagt im Kapitel, wo es um Filmenden geht:

Near the conclusion of North by Northwest, Cary Grant finds himself in something of a pickle.

His true love, Eva Marie Saint, is dangling helplessly in space on the face of Mount Rushmore. If she falls, splat. The reason she has not fallen is that Grant is holding her with one hand while with the other he grabs a rock ledge. Not easy. Watching all this is Martin Landau, the subvillain, who stands a few feet away, holding the precious statuette that contains valuable microfilm inside, said microfilm being of great danger to America should it fall into enemy hands. Grant, desperate, looks up at Landau and asks for help.

Landau walks over to Grant and, instead of bending down and aiding him, puts his foot on Grant’s fingers and begins pressing down. He grinds his shoe down as hard as he can.

That’s the pickle.

Now, between that moment and the end of this superb Ernest Lehman–Alfred Hitchcock collaboration, the following occurs:

a) Martin Landau is made to cease and desist.
b) Grant saves himself.
c) Grant also saves Eva Marie Saint.
d) The two of them get married.
e) The microfilm is saved for America.
f) James Mason, the chief villain, is captured and handed over to the authorities.
g) Grant and Saint take a train ride back east.

That’s a lot of narrative to be successfully tied up. And I would like you to guess how long it takes in terms of screen time for it to be accomplished. Got your guess? Here’s the answer –

– forty-three seconds.

Here’s how they do it, from the moment where Landau is crunching Grant’s hand. The camera’s in close up on the shoe and the fingers. A shot rings out. The shoe begins to slide away from the fingers. Next a cut of the statuette falling safely to the ground and cracking, revealing the microfilm inside. Now Landau falls to his death off Mount Rushmore. Now another part of Mount Rushmore, where Leo G. Carroll, a good guy, thanks a police officer who is holding a rifle. Behind Carroll is Mason, flanked by more officers. Now back to Grant and Eva Marie, him saying you can do it, her saying I can’t, back and forth, quick cuts between them, and then a really brilliant shot of Grant pulling her up, only now he’s not on Mount Rushmore, he’s in the upper berth of a train, and he brings her to him, calling her “Mrs. Thornhill” – Thornhill being his last name, so we know they’re married now – and as they embrace, a final shot of the train roaring into a tunnel as The End flashes on the screen.

I don’t know a more adroit ending to a film.

Im weiteren Verlauf des Kapitels erzählt Goldman noch von Psycho und dass die berühmte Duschszene, die mir persönlich immer ewig vorkommt, gerade mal 17 Sekunden lang ist. Außerdem lästert er über das Ende, denn die schöne Szene mit der knöchernen Mama und dem perrückten Anthony Perkins ist nicht das Ende:

The ending is seven full minutes away. And five of those minutes are taken up with one of the great snooze scenes, where the local shrink comes in and delivers this agonizingly primitive course in Freud, where he tells us that Perkins is a nut-cake.

Well, we’ve been pretty clued in to that fact by this time.

Adventures in the Screen Trade ist eines meiner Lieblingsbücher, wenn es um Film bzw. Drehbuchschreiben geht. Und der Nachfolger Which Lie Did I Tell? More Adventures in the Screen Trade macht übrigens genauso viel Spaß. Falls noch jemand ein nettes Muttertagsgeschenk sucht.