Movie Review: North by Northwest (1959)

North by Northwest (1959) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), a Madison Avenue ad executive, is mistaken for government agent George Kaplan at a bar in downtown New York. Kaplan's enemies kidnap Thornhill and take him to an isolated mansion on Long Island where they try to get information out of him. Thornhill plays the innocent very well (since he actually is), but the bad guys aren't buying it and decide to send him to his death by liquoring him up and driving him off a cliff. Thornhill has enough sense to knock the other guy out of the car and manages to escape by getting pulled over by the cops. Taken to the station, he calls his mom who comes the next morning with his lawyer to get him out. His outlandish story does not sit well with the judge or the local detectives, who go to the house and find the residents pulling a cover story that doesn't match Thornhill's. The plot careens on from there, with lots of chases, sneaking around, and some romantic encounters with Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint).

The movie is a big-budget, twisty thriller with a lot of comedy and drama thrown in. The story is exciting even though it doesn't always make sense. Some of the set pieces are very famous, like Thornhill being chased down by a crop duster out in the middle of nowhere and the finale on Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock's smooth and exciting visual style is in full glory. Grant and Saint have a lot of good chemistry. James Mason and Martin Landau also give wonderful performances as the villains. Some of the effects are bit dated (lots of green screen stuff at Mount Rushmore) but work well enough to move the story forward. Mount Rushmore seems shoehorned in for the dramatic location rather than for making narrative sense. The movie is glorious, entertaining nonsense. The Bernard Herrmann score is classic and Ernest Lehman's script crackles with great dialogue.

Highly recommended--this is definitely Top-5 in the Hitchcock canon, which is already a top-tier canon in film history.