To Catch a Thief, Go North by Northwest

On Friday night, I played hookey from Yom Kippur evening services and Amy and I headed to the Aero Theater, where American Cinematheque is in the middle of a Hitchcock tribute. Friday's double feature comprised two of the movies Cary Grant made with Hitchcock: NORTH BY NORTHWEST and TO CATCH A THIEF.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is my favorite Hitchcock movie. I have it on laserdisc, and I've seen it several times. I'd seen TO CATCH A THIEF once, on a pan-and-scan VHS cassette with bad Copyguard problems (the top of the frame skewed to the left). I didn't recall much from it, except that when I rented it I mistook it for the similarly-titled 1960's TV series, IT TAKES A THIEF.

Seeing NORTH BY NORTHWEST on the big screen was a delight (even though we had bad seats -- to the left of the screen, and close up) and brought out how painterly the late '50's Technicolor could make a movie. TO CATCH A THIEF also looked great on a big screen, especially since so many of the movie's charms are visual. THIEF doesn't have the action or suspense that NORTHWEST packs; but it has beautiful scenery (the French Riveria, with lots of helicopter shots of the hills and water), beautiful costumes (from Edith Head -- when the plot calls for an 18th-century-themed masquerade, the camera lingers on the details of each period costume), and beautiful people (Grant and Grace Kelly, who met her future husband during the movie shoot).

While Grant does get to look Ninja-cool in THIEF, decked out in black and lurking on rooftops, nothing compares with NORTHWEST, the movie that influenced all the spy flicks and TV series in the '60's. NORTHWEST even boasts actors who would later be in three of the top spy series of the swinging sixties: MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE (Martin Landau), GET SMART (Edward Platt), and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (Leo G. Carroll).

As an added treat, Eva Marie Saint strolled onto the stage at the front of the Aero Theater between movies, to answer questions about her role in NORTHWEST and other movies. Ms. Saint was all old-school-movie-star charm and dry wit. And her looks prove that fine cheekbones survive the decades. ("No Botox!" she exclaimed.) She discussed tidbits about the production, such as how Hitchcock avoided contemporary fashions in his movies because he thought nothing "dated" a movie worse than clothing. Another is that the Wright-type house on top of Mt. Rushmore in the movie didn't exist in real life. It was just a painting on a scrim on the soundstage. The Mt. Rushmore face on which the actors crawled in the climax was also a soundstage mockup -- although high enough up that there were padded mats on the floor to catch the actors if they fell.

The demand for this showing was so high that the theater was filled and many people were turned away. (And the Aero is a fairly large theater.) Just goes to show that well-made movies on the big screen can still pack 'em in.

Aero in the Valley of the Wind

NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND is my all-time favorite Hayao Miyazaki movie. It's the first feature Miyazaki directed from his own story. When we went to Japan in 2004, on our first full day there, we went to the Ghibli Museum, which was devoted to Miyazaki's work. That night, when we went to Akihibara, I bought one Region 2 DVD: NAUSICAA -- which had just been released on DVD in Japan, and had never been released uncut on American video at that point. When our tour went to a Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro later that night, guess what was playing on the restaurant's TV -- NAUSICAA.

So when the American Cinematheque played a rare big-screen showing of NAUSICAA this evening at the Aero theater in Santa Monica, how could we help but go? Apparently, a lot of people had the same idea -- the audience was full.

The only other time I saw the movie at a theater was when the horribly sliced up version, WARRIORS OF THE WIND, was shown at the LA Animation Festival in 1985. This version, like that one, was dubbed. But thankfully, it was a far more faithful dub -- and the film itself uncut.

The dub featured such actors as Patrick Stewart (Lord Yupa, naturally), Uma Thurman (Kushana), Chris Sarandon (Kurotowa), and Shia Lebouf (Asbell), and it wasn't too bad. But it wasn't quite up to the quality of such other Disney dubs of Miyazaki films as PORCO ROSSO or SPIRITED AWAY; or the celebrated dub of PRINCESS MONONOKE written by Neil Gaiman. And I'll always prefer the subtitled Japanese language film, particularly due to Sumi Shimamoto's performance as Nausicaa.

And the film. Oh my, the film. I've seen it many times, but it still has the power to squeeze some moisture out of my tearducts. Miyazaki's later films may be much more slickly animated (heck, this one even animates giant pillbugs by using sliding paper cutouts), and they have some excellent stories and characters; but nothing matches this one. And what character could match Nausicaa -- the teenage princess who's an ace flyer, a plant biologist, an incredible warrior (she wipes out a room full of sword and gun toting soldiers, using only a staff -- and it looks believable), a leader, a hero (she constantly finds herself saving both male and female characters, left and right), and someone who will fly toward a machine gun, unarmed, with her arms spread wide. And on top of that, she's compassionate and humble. As Amy mentioned, those parents whose daughters are infatuated with Disney princesses should show the girls this film; here's a princess who's a real role model.

Watching NAUSICAA brought to mind my recent viewing of GEDO SENKAI: TALES OF EARTHSEA, the debut animated feature from Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro Miyazaki. The character designs in GEDO SENKAI strongly resemble the elder Miyazaki's in NAUSICAA. But Goro's direction just doesn't have the storytelling art of Hayao's. Many scenes in GEDO SENKAI serve no purpose except to get the characters from point A to point B. Such a scene would be unthinkable in a Hayao Miyazaki movie. Every corner you turn in a Hayao Miyazaki film leads you to a new treat -- something that surprises you, or thrills you, or amuses you, or makes you gasp with wonder at its beauty.