North by Northwest

Rating: 9/10 (3 April 2016)

"North by Northwest" is one of Hitchcock's best films, and I'd even say it is his most purely entertaining.
The film starts off with a tracking shot of Roger Thornhill walking and talking quickly in a large crowd of people who all seem to be in a hurry. Right now he is simply a face in a crowd, but thanks to an identity mix up, he is soon a national criminal and has to constantly avoid not only the police, but the criminals that believe he is a government agent. And... that's pretty much the movie. But thanks to Hitchcock's direction and a constantly entertaining, tense, and surprisingly funny screenplay, this is now one of the all time classics.
And it completely deserves that status. The best way to describe why it does, is to use an example from the film. So, I will use the most famous scene. First, some context. So Roger Thornhill is instructed by Eve Kendall to go to this one area in the middle of nowhere in order for him to meet this secret agent so he can figure out what is going on. There are 2 things Robert doesn't know however: this secret agent doesn't exist, and Eve is setting him up. The audience knows both these things at this point. So Roger arrives at this location and it is completely empty. We see a lone crop duster in the background, but that's about it. Suddenly, we see a car coming, and while Roger thinks, "Will this be the man that will help me?", the audience is thinking "Is this man going to try and kill Roger?". A few more cars pass, each time the audience (and Roger) expects it to be the man. Finally, we see a car coming slowly from a route we haven't seen before. He comes closer and closer, until finally, he stops. Then, the door opens. A man gets out. The audience is held in this suspense for a little while. Then, finally, Roger approaches him. He begins to talk to him, and it becomes apparent that this is not the man. They both start talking and begin to notice the crop duster. The man then points out that the plane is not crop dusting where there are crops. Suddenly, the audience realizes, what is about to happen. The man gets in the bus, the bus drives away, and the plane begins to fly directly at Roger.
This scene continues, and it's the best and most suspenseful scene in the whole film, but many other scenes in the film aren't far behind. And that is saying something. The situation that Roger gets into, where no one is on his side and he constantly has to think on his feet, means that there is constant tension and threat in this film. And the fact that each scene in this film (that one in particular) is shot, edited, and blocked to perfection, means that this film contains some of the most suspenseful moments in any Hitchcock film, scratch that, any film in general.