"Subplot" Cary Grant versus James Mason; also "Slighting Chicago"!

Rating: 8/10 (23 October 2005)

Read reviews above for the exceptionally witty commentary this film attracts.
I add one sub plot and one slight to Chicago...
Subplot: Cary Grant, the good actor versus the less popular but greater actor, James Mason.
Read the list of Vandamm quotes to see how many times Mason's character digs at Grant's...acting! Only one instance listed below:
Phillip Vandamm: Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan?
(hear Mason as Vandamm comment on Grant's "acting school"
etc...!)
See Mason and Grant--observe their similar wardrobe and physical resemblance in their Mt. Rushmore restaurant...
Mason played Shakespeare well-- see his Brutus in Mankewicz's great 1952 Julius Caesar. Yet he sometimes got roles Grant had rejected...the most famous being Norman Maine in the great "A Star is Born".
I bet Hitch sensed this and encouraged Lehmann to hype up the actor rivalry in N by NW script.
This real life "competition" only enhances the on screen N by NW movie.
And the "Slight to Chicago"? Here, the greatest movie crime N by NW commits! Chicago offers so many sinister possibilities and great visuals in its skyscrapers and shore line, etc, etc. But no! Only a quick train shot of Chicago in the daylight...all the stellar skyline is shot in the dark! (Took the Blues Bros and later The Untouchables to "discover' Chicago's many layers... of film possibilities.)
Still---a great movie! A study in stylish dialogue, too!