War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even when it's a cold one....

Rating: 10/10 (12 October 2012)

The best 'mistaken identity' movie of them all, Hitchcock's masterpiece North By Northwest is a roller coaster ride from start to finish.
Hitchcock originally wanted James Stewart to play Roger Thornhill and I'm convinced that with Hitchcock's direction we would have got much the same result.
But Cary Grant is absolutely superb as the office exec who gets mistaken for George Caplan (who doesn't actually exist), and subsequently gets embroiled in a cold war plot where he has to fight to survive without having a clue what is happening around him.
Grant plays his role with aplomb offering a mixture of anxiety, humour, sarcasm and disbelief. James Mason (Vandamme) is the man who wants Caplan dead and with his main henchman (an ice cold Martin Landau), they think they've achieved this by loading Thornhill up with Bourbon before getting him behind the wheel of a speeding car on a cliff top road.
If only it were that easy. But Thornhill is a resilient man and after being framed for murder, looks to clear his name by discovering the truth
Now Miss Kendall appears in the film, (Vandamme's mistress played by the excellent Eva Marie Saint) who leads you to believe that she has it in for Mr Thornhill but all is not what it seems.
The plot twists and turns at relentless pace with a number of wonderful set pieces including crop dusting, Mount Rushmore and a hilarious confrontation in an auction room.
But the crop dusting scene is the stand out moment and is where Hitchcock shows off his directorial genius. He makes great use of the landscape and the power of silence (intertwined with the odd car or bus noise) to leave you in no doubt that Thornhill is on his own. Then, in the distance, the faint, insignificant hum of a crop dusting plane emerges without giving the audience any realisation that this is actually the weapon Vandamme has chosen to rid him of his supposed adversary for good.
Further twists include a fake shooting and the film culminates in the battle for survival on Mount Rushmore - epic stuff.
North By Northwest is escapism at its very best and Grant plays the role in part for laughs which adds to the the movie's charm. His sarcastic sparring with Vandamme and Leonard, and his unashamed flirting with Eve all conspire to make a top notch thriller which you will want to watch again and again.
It may not have the shocks as Psycho, the terror of the Birds, the taught tension and hopelessness of Rear Window. But as a thriller and piece of entertainment, this is one of Hitchcock's triumphs and gets a worthy 10 stars from me.