page_title: North by Northwest
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: North by Northwest / Plot
context_page_description: North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures".
  North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle out microfilm which contains government secrets. This is one of several Hitchcock films which feature a music score by Bernard Herrmann and an opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass, and it is generally cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits.
  North by Northwest is listed among the canonical Hitchcock films of the 1950s and is often listed among the greatest films of all time. It was selected in 1995 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
context_section_description: In 1958, two thugs in a New York City hotel bar hear a waiter calling the name of George Kaplan, whom they are looking for. When advertising executive Roger Thornhill summons the same waiter, he is mistaken for Kaplan, kidnapped, brought to the Long Island estate of Lester Townsend, and interrogated by spy Phillip Vandamm. The spy disregards Thornhill's protestations of innocence and arranges his death in a staged drunken driving accident. Thornhill survives to be arrested for driving under the influence and taken to the Glen Cove police station. Thornhill fails to convince his mother and the police of what happened. Police take him back to Townsend's home, where a woman says he showed up drunk at her dinner party. She also claims that Townsend is a United Nations diplomat.
  Thornhill and his mother go to Kaplan's hotel room. He is not there, so they sneak inside. Thornhill answers the room phone: the thugs are calling from the lobby.  He escapes them and visits the U.N. General Assembly building to meet Townsend—who is not the man he met on Long Island. As they speak, one of the thugs throws a knife and Townsend falls dead. Thornhill grabs the knife, giving the appearance that he was the murderer. A nearby photographer captures this apparent crime; Thornhill flees and attempts to find the real Kaplan.
  A government intelligence agency realizes that Thornhill has been mistaken for Kaplan, but they decide against rescuing him for fear of compromising their operation: Kaplan is a non-existent agent they created for a plan to thwart Vandamm.
  Thornhill sneaks onto a train, the 20th Century Limited to Chicago. On board, he meets Eve Kendall, who hides him from the police, and the two establish a relationship—on her part because she is secretly working with Vandamm. Later she tells Thornhill she has arranged a meeting with Kaplan at an isolated rural bus stop. Thornhill waits there, but rather than Kaplan arriving, Thornhill is attacked by men in a crop duster plane. After trying to hide in the fields, he steps in front of a speeding tank truck; it brakes for him and the airplane crashes into it, allowing him to escape.
  Thornhill reaches Kaplan's hotel in Chicago to discover that Kaplan had already checked out and left before the time when Kendall claimed she talked to him on the phone. When Thornhill goes to her room and confronts her, she leaves; he tracks her to an art auction where he finds Vandamm, who is purchasing a Mexican Purépecha statue. Vandamm leaves his thugs to deal with Thornhill; in order to escape, Thornhill disrupts the auction until police are summoned to remove him. He says he is the fugitive murderer, but they release him to the government agency's chief, "The Professor", who reveals that Kaplan was invented to distract Vandamm from the real government agent: Eve Kendall. Thornhill agrees to help maintain her cover.
  At the Mount Rushmore visitor center, Thornhill—now willingly playing the role of Kaplan—negotiates Vandamm's turnover of Kendall for her prosecution as a spy. When Thornhill appears to confront Kendall, she shoots him, seemingly fatally, and flees. In fact her gun was loaded with blanks.
  Afterwards, the Professor arranges for Thornhill and Kendall to meet. Thornhill discovers Kendall must depart with Vandamm and Leonard on a plane. When Thornhill tries to dissuade her from going, he is knocked unconscious and locked in a hospital room. Thornhill escapes the Professor's custody and goes to Vandamm's house to rescue Kendall.
  At the house, Thornhill overhears that the sculpture holds microfilm and that Leonard has discovered the blanks remaining in Kendall's gun. Vandamm indicates that he will kill Kendall during the flight by throwing her from the plane. Thornhill manages to warn her with a surreptitious note. Vandamm, Leonard, and Kendall depart the house to board the plane. As Vandamm boards the plane, Kendall takes the sculpture and runs to the pursuing Thornhill. They flee to the top of Mount Rushmore. As they climb down the mountain they are pursued by Vandamm's thugs, including Leonard, who
caption: The climax at Mount Rushmore
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