Old equals good?

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2005)

One of the big IL' movies. Hitchcock. Cary Grant. 8.6 here at IMDb! This move, along with a lot of other "golden oldies", are given much too high ratings at IMDb. I argue that the reason for this over rating is that people review movies as if it was sports and not art. Let me explain ;) When you review a world cup soccer match from the 50:s you must take into consideration that the game was much slower, the tactics simple, and that the players were not very well trained, compared to today that is. The world cup final between West Germany and Hungary in 1954 was top quality entertainment, performed by world class artists, if you looked at it 1954. If you look at it today the first thing that strikes you is how much everything has improved. Put simply,the world cup winners of 1954 would not win one match in any division two series in Europe today. But still we can look at the cup final from -54 and say, yeah that was a great game, considering it was played 50 years ago. With art, it's another story. You don't consider, or rather, shouldn't consider, age as a factor. You won't hear anyone say - Yeah, Picasso painted some good shiit back in his days, but he could never compete with today's artists. The same goes for Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo, Michelangelo etc etc. My argument is that the movie art should be treated as any other art form.
Let's apply this to the movie in question. Acting: I would like anyone that gave this movie a rating over 6-7 to look at the car chase scene one more time and tell me what they think of Cary Grants acting in that scene. I can tell you all that one of my friends, at age 15, acted drunk better than old Cary did here. (And nobody even believed that my friend was drunk.) It pisses me off when someone says that the acting is superb in this movie. It is an insult to all actors of today.
Plot: I won't bore you with an analysis. Lets just state that the plot is unbelievable and some scenes ridiculous.
Script: Hitchcock is said to be the master of suspense. In North by Northwest the suspense level is so low that not even a ten year old would get a pulse from watching it. The dialogue is however smart and funny.
Conclusion: Bad acting. Unbelievable plot. Pretty funny. Extremely overrated. 4/10. If you are hungry for a Hitchcock flick, watch Rear window instead.