Classic Hitch.

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2003)

A classic film of a classic 'Hitchcockian' case of mistaken identity, this is essentially a remake of THE 39 STEPS - but considerably expanded to make use of glorious technicolour and to emphasize the paranoia that can develop from a man feeling pushed to his very limit by events and circumstances maliciously controlled by others. As usual, Hitch has a cameo in his own film: #Man Missing Departing Bus, at the very beginning!
Overgrown mummy's boy but successful advertizing executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for 'George Kaplan,' a CIA-created 'legend' (the intelligence community's jargon for the name and biography invented to hide operatives' real identities) designed to decoy Van Dam (James Mason), agent provocateur of an unspecified foreign power, away from their genuine agent's activities. To prove his innocence, Fairburn must be 'Kaplan' so as to draw Van Dam and his men out and expose them. Nevertheless, 'the memorable scenes' are indeed memorable: the cropduster and the dénoument dangling off Mount Rushmore.
Glamour is provided by the very fine Eve Marie-Saint, who demonstrates that 'they just don't make 'em like they used to' ... women simply do not have that glamorous mystique anymore (nor do cameramen have soft-focus lenses, apparently); nowadays, what you see is what you get: very little subtlety, but a lot of bare flesh and squelchy kissing. Come on, film-makers, do leave us something to the imagination - that's what the nickelodeon chaps made films to be all about, remember!
I first saw this film when I was 13, in a hotel in St. Dogmaels in Wales. A boy & girl combo came into the TV room and the film managed to desist their squelchy kissing. An elderly couple entered during the ad-break and the chap rather pompously asked if we could switch over for The News. The rest of us thereupon trooped down to the cellar-room, where, unheated (this was still Britain in the 1970s), the remainder of the film was viewed and thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, the cold probably added to the film's atmosphere ...

Stalwart and calm Leo G. Carroll, the 'professor,' played this same sort of rôle again the followed decade, as 'General Waverley,' stalwart and calm commander of the United Network for Communications & Law Enforcement - "When one has manners, one need never apologize ..." Quite so!