groundbreakingly gripping

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2008)

Ever notice how Oprah is trying to pile great life-changing TV-moments on top of one another, time after time? This is exactly what Hitchkock was doing for cinema. The great thing about North by Northwest though, is that he's trying to do it all in one movie.
I challenge the reader to name any other title that has so many groundbreaking suspense scenes: the abduction, the drunk driving, the UN-building scene (He has the knife: he's the killer!- oh no!-the paranoia!), the crop duster-scene, the crazy auction (Cary Grant bidding ridiculously high and then claiming the crap isn't worth a buck) and of course the very slow and gripping Mount Rushmore chase-scene.
Watching this movie today, it feels easily as fast-paced and gripping as, say, Casino Royale or MI3. It's not overstating to claim that this movie is, in fact, the first Bond(-type) movie, still waiting to be topped.
Of course, you have to love Cary Grant, you have to love Technicolor, you have to love the now firmly outdated cardboard characters. If you don't, it's your loss; I beg you: get over yourself!(you don't have to love Oprah) Having said this, I would like to end saluting Eve Kendall and Cary Grant: a match made in heaven. This may not be Hitchcock's finest film, but I think these are his finest leading actors. Eve Kendall is everything you want from a Hitchkock-lady. Women who, under the pretense of ladylikeness, are in fact a tad trashy. So matching the fifties.
And Grant is the ideal Hitch-hero: fragile yet masculine, dull, but somehow fascinating.
Go watch!