North
by Northwest (1959)
Starring
Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason
Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Film Notes
"A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and
enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen
Kane, Only
Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck).
Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo
(1958) and the stark horror of Psycho
(1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a
romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances.
Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic
Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films
Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The
Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to
Marnie."
It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT),
an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named
George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin
Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a
Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly
choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces:
the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a
pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount
Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann
score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire?" (Jim Emerson, Amazon.com)
Rated: NR