The Best Hitchcock Film?

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2010)

It's touch to pick a best Hitchcock, because you have to look at the whole spectrum of films and categorize them. You have your thriller films, smaller films, and mainstream ones. Or at least that is how I could divide them. North by Northwest would most certainly belong in his mainstream films category and would most certainly be his best easily within that respective category and possibly his best film period.
NXNW finds Hitchcock at the top of his form. No doubt he showed early technically impressive signs, most especially with the film Rope, which was made up entirely of two takes. Here though Hitchcock is at this most confident, his most steady. It's had to imagine the story came from the idea to use a bunch of different set pieces because the story is one of the best parts of the movie. Again he uses his staple of mistaken identity, but Cary Grant goes above and beyond the call of duty being particular awesome as Roger O. Thornhill a New York Mad Man. A run though of the plot would be a little dumb at this point, but just know that Grant gets framed as a murderer and has to track down the killers and clear his name. Along the way we runs into Eva Marie Saint, who may or may not be someone to trust. The two share some real chemistry, which sort of grounds a film that is a bit ridiculous (in a good way). Some may say that it is a little long, but the pacing is perfect, there is never really a dull moment, plus wasn't that abomination Transformers 2 longer, and everyone seen that.
The film is full of iconic scenes, the crop duster scene, Mount Rushmore, etc. What is most interesting is that I've heard of comparisons of this to James Bond, but the first Bond film didn't come out till the following year. North by Northwest may very well be Hitchcock's best film, if not it is right up there with Vertigo and Rear Window. I think the fact that he made those three brilliant films alone amazing enough.