Hasn't Aged Well

Rating: Null/10 (24 June 2000)

Hitchcock was likely a genius in his day, and many of his films extraordinary. But at least this one has aged poorly. I was prompted to revisit it because I'm making my own Shakespeare film festival, and the title of this ostensibly comes from Hamlet. He is mad north by northwest as a ruse. There is nothing remotely as sophisticated here.
What this film has going for it is Grant's suave composure in adversity, which must have been rare 40 years ago. But this has been played to death in recent decades.
What it has against it:
--the sets, even the monument are obviously fake junk
--the story is unbelieveable. This is normal in film, but in this case there are assumptions about the cold war which even in historic context seem offensive.
--there are huge logic holes: for instance the bad guys are spies who on the one hand must hide microfilm in a statue, but at the same time fly their escape plane into one of the most popular national parks!
--Eva just isn't that charming, and what's up with her motivation? She's a prostitute that turned good at risk to her life because of patriotism?
--If Grant is to be killed, why lure him to a remote location so he can be run down by a biplane? Why does the plane run into the gas truck?
--If the spy is so smart, why kidnap Grant and take him to a house illegally borrowed from the head of Intepol? Recall that they knew (or thought they did) that Grant knew who he really was, and they intended to kill him anyway. Why the charade?
--Hitchcock was a clever user of the camera, with scenes well framed. But that was in the era of largely stationary cameras. A moving camera was so rare as to have been then a noticable effect. Not so today. Hitchcock's camera is just plain primitive now.
--Grant was already an old man. His curvature of the spine is noticeable as well as his stiff gait.
--Any tension felt by prior generations was lost on me, and I'm a pretty old guy myself!
Lord Edward Bulwar Lytton was highly regarded in his day too. Now, he's a joke, of interest only to historians of the novel. To me, this film is only of historic interest.