The John Royal Affair

The John Royal Affair

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The John Royal Affair
The John Royal Affair
Life at a Crossroads, Featuring Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock

Life at a Crossroads, Featuring Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock

an appreciation of North by Northwest and the art of silence and negative acting

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JOHN ROYAL
Jun 14, 2024
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The John Royal Affair
The John Royal Affair
Life at a Crossroads, Featuring Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock
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There’s a scene about two-thirds of the way through North by Northwest that is one of my favorite sequences ever filmed. It’s essentially four minutes of Cary Grant standing at a bus stop sign in the middle of farm land on the side of a two-lane highway in the middle of Indiana.

The sequence is incredibly sparse and simple. It’s just Grant for most of i…

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