Essential Hitchcock...great mixture of humor and suspense...

Rating: Null/10 (8 May 2001)

Ernest Lehman's screenplay for 'North by Northwest' must have caught Hitch's eye from the start--it's so typical of the kind of film he loved to make (a man on the run from unseen or unknown enemies). He milks every drop of suspense and along the way injects a lot of humor and sexual innuendo with the usual blonde femme fatale (Eva Marie Saint) providing a good number of delightful moments. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are perfect in the leads and James Mason and Martin Landau are highly satisfactory villains.

It's all great fun, with Grant mistaken in the opening scene for a Federal Intelligence agent who doesn't really exist. He is soon swept up in a an amusing and suspenseful twist of plot complications involving spies and counterspies with an unpredictable series of nail-biting scenes that never let up until the smashing climax at Mount Rushmore. The dust-cropping scene is a highlight, skillfully edited and photographed for maximum effect.
As usual, the suspense begins with the opening credits as Bernard Herrmann's staccato notes of music prepare us for what follows. An all-time great that has to rank as one of Grant's and Hitchcock's best films.