Paul Klee

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in
North by Northwest, 1959

Paul Klee, Rock Temple, 1925

Paul Klee, who was born in 1879 and died in 1940, was a Swiss Expressionist whose work had many affinities in Surrealism, especially in its interest in dreams, ‘primitive’ art, and mythology. Hitchcock’s fleeing couples usually have to negotiate their way through treacherous labyrinths that often include large monuments (the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur, Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest). Paul Klee, whom Hitchcock claimed as one of his favorite painters (and whose original paintings decorated Hitchcock’s home), created a mold for the Mount Rushmore set in his drawing Rock Temple. The monumental streaked drawing with its parallel lines resembles the surface of the Mount Rushmore set on which the climax of North by Northwest occurs. The juxtaposition here of the small characters and the large monument is an important part of Hitchcock’s style of suspense. The architectural perspective shown in Klee’s drawing was an important aspect of Modernist art in the 1930’s and in many of Hitchcock’s films. The labyrinthine Rock Temple’s jagged edges are reminiscent of the recurring Hitchcockian moment of a character dangling over a chasm, as in Vertigo, Young and Innocent, and North by Northwest.