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North By Northwest

(1959)

136 min. MGM. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll.

North By Northwest is perhaps the finest example ever of the possibilities of popular entertainment. Alfred Hitchcock's film is thrilling, funny, and romantic; it elevates popcorn adventure to art, and defines the ideal use of star power. It also perhaps best represents Hitchcock, who shepherded Ernest Lehman's outstanding screenplay through elegant production design to a final product that marries deadly intrigue to out-and-out delight.

North By Northwest storms onto the screen with a thundering Bernard Herrmann overture and angular Saul Bass titles superimposed onto a New York skyscraper (the sequence rounds off with Hitch's customary cameo). Amid the hustle and bustle of New York, we hone in on one man, Roger O. Thornhill, played by a never-better Cary Grant. Hitchcock takes full advantage of Grant's droll delivery and debonair charm, while gently mocking that very suavity by making advertising executive Thornhill both an everyday, accidental hero (a custom of the master of suspense) and--horrors!--a mama's boy (incidentally, Jessie Royce Landis, who played Mrs. Thornhill, was actually within a few months of Grant's age).

In a simple twist of fate, Thornhill is mistaken for one George Kaplan by a ring of international spies, headed up by Philip Vandamm (James Mason at his most urbane). More sheer luck allows Thornhill to escape the bad guys' clutches, but his attempts to expose them to the police leave him baffled and chagrined. Taking it upon himself to investigate, with mother in tow, Thornhill finds himself framed for murder. In a series of cat-and-mouse games with Vandamm, his gorgeous paramour (Eva Marie Saint), and the American authorities, (represented by Hitchcock favorite Leo G. Carroll), Thornhill sees the country, gets the girl, outruns a sinister cropduster, and faces a final challenge on the rock face of Mount Rushmore. (Hitchcock famously planned to call the film "The Man in Lincoln's Nose"; the actual title's fictional compass direction hails from Hamlet's feint of insanity "I am but mad north-north-west.")

North By Northwest takes on near-mythical proportions as Thornhill leaves the comfortable womb of mother and the patriarchal halls of business to face the dizzying world of big brother. Thornhill's lone ranging--though motivated by longing for the lady Eve--makes Thornhill feel small in the imposing American landscape (physical and metaphysical). Nothing is as it first seems, and Lehman and Hitchcock elaborate on the particularly thorny problems of identity and personal trust. Thornhill's initials--R.O.T.--doubly emphasize his unsavory existence before his call to adventure ("What does the 'O' stand for?" Eve asks; "Nothing," Roger shrugs).

North By Northwest races past "icebox logic" (Hitch's phrase for the viewer's late-occurring realization of plotholes) with brilliantly conceived action sequences that make for swift, breathtaking fun. Saint as Hitch's "cool blonde" femme fatale recalls Kim Novak's object of obsession in the previous year's Vertigo, while Grant's literally monumental adventure improves upon the already snappy Saboteur. But few if any films have ever challenged Ernest Lehman's crown for flirtatious dialogue, punctuated by Hitchcock's precociously raunchy final shot of a train plummeting into a tunnel.