137 minutes of "Huh?"

Rating: 5/10 (18 April 2006)

Had I been alive in 1959 and capable of seeing "North by Northwest," I probably would have gotten up and left the theater halfway through--not because it's a poorly made film, but because it exists, to this day, for no other purpose than to jerk the viewer around to the point of cold indifference.
Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed playing his audience like a piano, and while I have no problem with that, all his notes are out of tune here. One part vanity piece, one part spy thriller, "North by Northwest" has innocent Everyman Cary Grant on the run after being framed for a diplomat's murder; Eva Marie Saint is the femme fatale who may or may not be playing both sides; and James Mason is some sort of vaguely-defined heavy masterminding everything. Unlike Anthony Perkins in "Psycho" or Jon Finch in "Frenzy," Grant is filled with too much winking, boyish charm to ever convey a sense of consequence for his character; Marie Saint is presented as more of a plot device than a character; and Mason brings a fair amount of class to his limited scenes.
Maybe I was expecting something different, and therefore kept waiting for "North by Northwest" to turn into the tense, gripping thriller it has been hailed as. Ultimately, only a director with Hitchcock's pedigree could get away with a project so flagrantly self-indulgent and impossibly plotted and still earn a slew of sycophantic raves. Perhaps I took it too seriously, but "North by Northwest" is an incredibly empty romp that's high on style, but precious little else.
4.5/10