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Recently, I saw a 4K restoration of North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “wrong man” movie. It’s not a thriller, per se, as it is too light and comedic. Cary Grant usually keeps things breezy. By the way, it’s totally the right tone for the film. North by Northwest concludes at Mount Rushmore with people climbing on the faces!
The restoration cleans up the look of the picture, of course. Of course, there can be drawbacks to that. In older movies, there was a certain way of filming car driving scenes that was commonplace. Rear projection was the norm. The actors would sit in a motionless car with the scenery on a screen behind them. You know, like the Conan O’Brien bit.
In a black-and-white movie, this is noticeable, but less distracting. In a color film, you definitely notice it more. However, in a color film with a 4K restoration, the artifice really jumps out. Watching the driving scenes in North by Northwest I definitely thought to myself, “This looks remarkably fake.” Sure, I had seen the film before, which allowed my mind to wander a bit, but even so. There’s plenty of other fakery in the film, but those scenes really stuck out to me.
So, if you ever get a chance to see a 4K restoration of a movie from the ‘40s, ‘50s, or early ‘60s, pay attention to any car driving scenes.
