An excellent, first-class thriller - thrilling, chilling, and funny; one of Hitchcock's best

Rating: 10/10 (28 November 2009)

"North by Northwest" may very well be one of the most entertaining and highly enjoyable thrillers ever made by a major Hollywood studio. I mean that, really. Expertly directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the film fires an arsenal of thrills, chills, first-rate performances from a first-rate cast, spectacular action set-pieces, and humor. Even with the humor, you can forget how profoundly disturbing this movie can be at times, but it's all part of the fun of "North by Northwest."
I'll be the first ever to admit that I'm no Hitchcock fanatic in even the slightest sense, but there is one reason to believe that he was one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived. The man knew his way around films in a way few filmmakers today will ever be; today's wannabe directors, take note. The way he composes his scenes, his actors, and the on-screen action with expert precision and style shows that he always knew what he was doing when he was behind the camera, and he rightfully earned the respect as a master filmmaker.
The film toys with the idea of identity. "North by Northwest" begins with a kidnapping, and a case of mistaken identity: a hapless Manhattan advertising executive, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), is taken hostage by hired goons and brought to the lavish estate of one Phillip Vandamm (James Mason). Here, he is harshly interrogated by his captors, who believe that he is really a secret agent of the government named George Kaplan. Thornhill tries to prove his innocence to them to no avail, and is soon plunged into a series of harrowing events of escalating danger, adventure and magnitude, culminating in him dangling for his dear life from Mt. Rushmore with the would-be love of his life Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), the mysterious woman he met while on a train trying to elude his would-be captors.
"North by Northwest" may very well be one of the greatest chase movies ever made. The movie itself is a slow-burn of escalating danger and suspense, as Our Hero Roger Thornhill finds himself thrust into events that he can neither understand or comprehend. And we identify with the confusion he has over the surreal turn-of-events that have taken over his life. Cary Grant infuses his character with enough confusion and witty one-liners (many of which are actually quite funny and earn some much-needed laughs to alleviate the suspense) that he earns our sympathy as an Everyman who is forced to take the reins of being a hero to fight for his life against an unspeakable evil.
Of course, this film is also noteworthy for its groundbreaking and suspenseful action sequences, the most spectacular of which is the infamous "crop-dusting" scene, which has to be seen to be truly believed. That scene alone is worth the price of the admission. Rather than waste time on special effects and explosions and things of that nature (today's filmmakers, again take note), Hitchcock instead relies on the tension and the slow build-up so that he lets us have it with a one-two punch to the gut. Hitchcock also makes expert use of wide open spaces during this scene, and the wide-angle lens of his camera, so that even even when an airplane is the only thing we see in a wide-angle shot of a corn field, there is still an ever-looming sense of danger that something else could jump out at us from anywhere on the screen.
"North by Northwest" is an expertly directed thriller from the "Master of Suspense" Alfred Hitchcock. Today's filmmakers should definitely take note of this film and look for the many reasons for why it is as good as it is. His next film after this was of course the granddaddy of today's slasher flicks (and my personal favorite Hitchcock movie ever), 1960's "Psycho."
10/10