Hitchcock at his zenith.

Rating: 9/10 (28 November 1999)

"North by Northwest" is undeniably one of Hitchcock's best movies - not to mention one of my ten personal favorites in general. A brilliant script, full of well-planned twists, Hitchcock's energetic and vivid direction, the constantly clever dialogue, the first-rate production values, an incredible score by Bernard Herrmann (who pretty much ripped-off himself the following year when he wrote the score for "Psycho") and several memorable sequences (the often neglected auction scene is extremely amusing) are only some of the ingredients that make this thriller so terrific. I have two minor complaints, though: the film is SLIGHTLY overlong (maybe it could have been 15 minutes shorter) and Eva Marie Saint just isn't a particularly attractive woman, compared to Grace Kelly or even to Tippi Hedren, so she is kind of miscast in the role of a "femme fatale". And her performance isn't in the same class with the delightful ones that Grant and Mason give. But this is still a superb movie, and it is far less dated than the early Bond films, which it probably influenced.