Masterclass Cinema!

Rating: 10/10 (24 March 2016)

I have seen all those iconic scenes in snippets but have never seen the film in its entirety. By iconic I mean the scenes where a plane swoops down to attack Cary Grant like a hawk to a prey and the climatic foot chase at Mount Rushmore. Nowadays, the weak CGI might cause a frown on your face and they would probably feel too familiar, but you must remember they are first done here; this is the genesis. It's because of Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest that so many action scenes are possible. This is where it happened. I knew all that plus the taut suspense, the economically drawn characters, and the music score, but I never counted on such an awesome screenplay. The dialogue is simply amazing. Just the foreplay dialogue between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint is the stuff of so much conversations. It is erotic and playful enough to make me grin like a monkey. It is filled with eroticism, yet subtle, never high-brow, with a cheeky know-it-all tone. The suspense coupled with the comedy and romance is almost a template for movies of this type nowadays, but no one can direct like the master. The film may be 1959 but it feels so on the beat even today. This is masterclass cinema.