A thrilling action/adventure whose reach somewhat exceeds its grasp

Rating: 9/10 (10 August 2015)

While not quite Hitchcock's best, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is nevertheless one of his most thrilling, and funny, motion pictures. It stars Cary Grant as an ad executive who gets mistaken for a government agent and has to go on the run in order to survive. Sound familiar? That's because the plot is kind of similar to Hitchcock's own SABOTEUR and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (although you can be certain that Cary Grant's character didn't; the bad guys just think he does). This simple premise provided for a myriad of exciting set-pieces that exemplify the kind of suspense-building and thrills that Hitch's audience were most certainly used to by this point in his career. Cary Grant is quite a good replacement for the everyman character that James Stewart played so well, and Eva Marie Saint plays a nice twist on the femme fatale as this film's Hitchcock blonde. Still, what struck me so much was how funny this film was. At certain points, it was like watching a comedy of errors combined with a spy thriller. There was also a lot more obvious sexual innuendo than in any Hitchcock picture I've seen before. Signs of the changing times, maybe? Moving on, even though it wasn't as tightly written as some of Hitchcock's other films, being essentially a bunch of action set-pieces strung together, it was still rather inventive and the momentum was kept going at a pretty good pace throughout. In particular, the crop-dusting scene and the climactic sequence on Mount Rushmore stand out from the rest, as I'm sure they do to many others who've seen the film. However, what made this not quite as perfect as could have been has a lot do with Hitchcock's tendency to do a lot of shooting on sound stages. As a result, a car chase that takes place early on (with a drunk Cary Grant) was less thrilling and believable than it could have been, and Bernard Herrmann's score had to compensate (a little too much, perhaps). And, the villains this time around weren't as memorable, mostly because we don't really see them do anything villainous. Still, James Mason was a pleasure to watch, and we get to see Martin Landau play a heavy. Overall, I do think this is better than the previous Hitchcock films I mentioned, if for no other reason than that there's more of what worked in those films. Still, at 136 minutes, it is a little too long and, like many other of Hitchcock's movies I've seen, the ending was too abrupt and a little bit of a cheat. So, while its reach does somewhat exceed its grasp in terms of the action, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is still a suitably thrilling action/adventure that ranks among the most entertaining that Hitchcock ever made.