It's the economy! We be sorry consumers now, you bet.
This is a second version of one I posted earlier, I have two North by Northwests to come.
"North by Northwest" (suggested as source material by Matt Dawson ) comes from the line in Hamlet in which he explains that he is only mad when the wind is "North Northwest". So what is up with the tiny men in the late fifties? First we had The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957, followed by The Attack of the Fifty-foot Woman in 1958 - did the Sixties throw a long shadow into the past, causing anxiety about the coming of the women's liberation movement? North by Northwest was released in 1959, and Cary Grant's character is first mocked by his mother and then expertly manipulated by the character played by Eva Marie Saint.