Playful,exciting Hitchcock thriller

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2007)

Hitchcock's most entertaining masterpiece is a delight to sit through. The 2 hours + running time moves so fast,you're surprised when the movie is over.Hitchcock keeps the pace going and it never lets up.If the suspense might drag he inserts some clever comedy relief. Cary Grant is absolutely fantastic in the lead-role.James Mason makes the perfect gentleman crook,Eva Marie Saint is sexy and wonderful and Martin Landau is deliciously sinister as Mason's gay henchman.The movie is full of great set-pieces with the famous crop-dusting scene the most spectacular. My favorite scene is at the auction. How Grant gets out of his predicament is one of the movie's highlights.Although Hitchcock's themes repeated themselves ,his best films were always original and exciting. In a way he had made this movie earlier. "The 39 Steps (1935)" and "Saboteur (1942)" have similar story lines. But this is really one of the classic masterpieces of the cinema.