One of Hitchcock's Finest Movies

The 1950’s were certainly a golden era for Alfred Hitchcock. Over the course of that decade he shot what many consider to be his greatest movies: Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho (1960) and North by Northwest. Not enough? Well he also had Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder which both feature in IMDB top 250, and a number of other classics.

Released in 1959, North by Northwest is a story of mistaken identity. It’s something that Hitchcock had certainly done before but this time he mixes it with a plot as deeply threaded as that of Vertigo. Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill but is mistakenly identified as secret agent George Kaplan. He’s picked up by a couple of henchmen, dragged off to a country mansion where he’s questioned. Unwilling to give the crooks what they want, they decide to knock him off, an attempt that Thornhill manages to escape from. Unable to convince the police of what happened to him, Thornhill decides to investigate himself. When he finds himself holding the murder weapon that killed a UN ambassador, he’s left with no chance but to run. In trying to track down Kaplan, Thornhill is chased by the police as well as the crooks who believe he still is Kaplan.

Thornhill’s journey is a complicated one. Having started out the movie as an advertising executive sharing martinis in a hotel lobby, he finds himself travelling from New York to Chicago to Mt. Rushmore, all the while trying to avoid arrest or assassination. He runs into a suspiciously forward Eva Marie Saint, who sends him to the now famous encounter with a crop dusting airplane. All the while Thornhill manages to keep a calmness and composure that contradicts his executive lifestyle, and manages to keep his iconic grey suit perfectly pressed throughout. With his suaveness and sharp wit, it’s been suggested that Thornhill may have provided many of the characteristics for the first Bond movies.

Hitchcock was in fact considered for Thunderball, but reportedly wanted too much money and too much control. In North by Northwest he certainly creates one of the greatest and most exciting spy thrillers we’ve seen and the great part about it is that Thornhill isn’t a spy nor does he ever carry a weapon. There’s a suspenseful cold war feel about it all. Great credit has to go to screenwriter Ernest Lehman (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, West Side Story, The Sound of Music). When Hitchcock initially approached him, he had very little more than Mt. Rushmore and mistaken identity. The idea of Kaplan being fictitious (that’s revealed early in the movie) was a clever MacGuffin that was purchased from an American journalist and based on a real plot during World War 2. There are a couple of irritating flaws in the early part of the movie, ideas that work only because the screenplay is convenient enough to let them work, but this can hardly take away from the ingenious script and the suspense it creates.

There’s been enough said about the crop duster scene already and it’s certainly among the most famous in movie making history. It’s a breathtaking scene even more so considered that it’s now 50 years old. But there are several fantastically staged scenes from Hitchcock in this movie. He couldn’t get rights for filming the UN building so he used a hidden camera instead. Nor could he get the rights to film on Mt. Rushmore but instead built a completely convincing looking replica. Sometimes I found Hitchcock’s fixation with grand suspenseful finales a little excessive but I love the way he wraps things up with a clever cut in North by Northwest.

This is an extremely well crafted and intelligent plot. Cary Grant inspired a half century (so far) of protagonists, and Hitchcock’s suspenseful scenes are among his most impressive. My only complaint would be the convenient plot flaws early in the movie which might have been a little better done. But this certainly ranks among Hitchcock’s finest work.

Verdict: 4 ½ Stars Highly Recommended