Sex and Death

One particularly fascinating aspect of the film’s oedipal narrative is the degree to which Eve and Thornhill’s relationship is predicated on sex and death (North by Northwest’s narrative device representing castration). Herrmann called the overture “a kaleidoscopic orchestral fandango designed to kick off the exciting rout which follows…the crazy dance about to take place between Cary Grant and the world” [10]. The opening credit sequence supports this assertion. But, as already noted, the fandango’s various appearances suggest that it might better be understood as Grant’s dance with death. On the other hand, Herrmann’s overture is not the only aspect of the score that is associated with the film’s oedipal narrative. Herrmann’s love theme and Hitchcock’s corresponding visuals unite these two themes, bringing them into line with the oedipal narrative.

The first appearance of Herrmann’s love theme occurs as Thornhill and Eve dine together on the train. As the scene begins, Thornhill and Eve’s conversation is underscored by diegetic muzak. As Eve rather unsubtly makes her intentions known (“I don’t particularly like the book I started. Know what I mean?”), Herrmann’s love theme appears for the first time. This musical exchange, Royal S. Brown contends, is a “comment on the lukewarm state of Grant’s and Saint’s relationship at the outset of the conversation, whereas the more impassioned Herrmann strains carry us into the budding sexual relationship” [11]. This first occurrence underscores a new development in the oedipal narrative. Thornhill has found a viable replacement for his mother, and a means of escape from his oedipal woes.

 

This development sets up the first association of sex and death in the next scene. In his essay on the film, Robin Wood highlights Thornhill and Eve’s exchange about murder that occurs in Eve’s sleeping car.

“ Are you planning to murder me?”
“ Shall I?”
“ Please do.”

“It is all playful on the surface,” Wood notes, “but as they kiss his hands encircle her head as if either to strangle or to crush her, and hers move to his to draw him down, in an attitude of surrender” [12]. Here, Bellour would argue, “she becomes the petite bourgeoise who expects everything from the man who will be able to wrest her from the tangled fantasy whose object she has become in order to lock her up for the rest of her days in the silken prison of marriage,”[13] a marriage that is proposed—and initially understood to be a sexual proposition—when Eve and Thornhill are confronted with certain death and consummated with an altogether different form of death, le petit mort.


Consider the love theme's eight appearances:

Eve and Thornhill meet in the dining car A discussion of murder Eve looks back at Vandamm and Leonard knowingly as she and Roger (wearing a “red cap” uniform) run the gauntlet Eve tries to convince Thornhill that he must leave the station to meet Kaplan (becomes dissonant at the end before a dissolve to the highway bus stop)
Entering Eve’s hotel room Thornhill asks whether Eve has ever killed anyone The meeting in the woods following Kaplan’s death The final two shots

 

Herrmann and Hitchcock’s masterstroke occurs in the final scenes when the overture and the love theme come together with the visuals to create the ultimate metaphor for the union of sex and death. Thornhill and Eve are being chased across the face of Mount Rushmore by Leonard and Valerian. The fandango builds relentlessly, simulating the effect of a building orgasm. As Thornhill and Valerian struggle, Eve is attacked by Leonard and nearly falls to her death. The fandango gives way to a series of stinger chords as Thornhill attempts to hold on while Leonard’s foot is pressed on his hand. Suddenly, Leonard is shot and sent plummeting to his doom. The music begins to build again, recommencing the simulated orgasm. Then, a harp and jump cut to Thornhill and Eve on the train announce the return of the love theme which builds orgasmically, eventually incorporating the overture’s timpanis following a cut to a train entering a tunnel. Hitchcock claims that this phallic image is the only symbolism he employs in the film [14]. This clearly not the case. But, his desire to draw attention to this image is fitting as the phallic visuals collide with the music, creating a multi-faceted depiction of le petit mort, the final association of sex and deth, and the resolution of the oedipal conflict. Thornhill has internalized the morality of the professor, growing out of his oedipal complex. Tthe train enters the tunnel, and the development of the superego is complete.