When you think of Alfred Hitchcock's films, there are features that instantly come to mind. There's the wrong man aided by a mysterious and sexy blonde. A well-dressed and classy villain is trailing our hero. A chase for some object leads them to a magnificent, tense climax that leaves the audience breathless.
Those are the pieces that screenwriter Ernest Lehman put together when writing what became Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece, North By Northwest. It is the anti-Vertigo, which, as great as it is, may be too serious for its own good. With North By Northwest made right after it, Hitchcock goes back to having fun and being playful with his audience. It's Hitchcock going back to his style of pure entertainment.
From the moment the film starts, we know we're in for something fast-paced and exciting. Bernard Hermann's tense opening credits take us to the hustle and bustle of New York, where we meet Roger O. Thornhill, played by Cary Grant. He's busy as usual, as any ad executive would be. Suddenly, he's kidnapped by two men who think he's George Kaplan and take him to Lester Townsend's house on Long Island. But he doesn't meet Townsend. Instead, he meets Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) who refuses to believe that he's not Kaplan.
Eventually, he escapes their grasp, only to bump into them again and learn that he's now entwined in a spy conspiracy. Thornhill also meets Eve Kendall, played by the always stunning Eva Marie Saint. It turns out that she is not only in league with Vandamm, but his lover. However, that doesn't stop him from falling in love with Eve as the two continually meet throughout the film.
Grant and Hitchcock worked together perfectly and this was their fourth and final collaboration. Hitchcock recognized right away that Thornhill was a Grant-type character, suave and not easily fooled. Once Grant figures out his place in the plot, he begins to outsmart his antagonists, even pretending to be Kendall, the man they thought he was in the first place. He perfectly contrasts the great James Mason.
Hitchcock needed to make North By Northwest at one point of his career, coming after the art films he made with James Stewart in the '50s (Rear Window, Vertigo and, to a lesser extent, The Man Who Knew Too Much). It's not a dumbing down of the audience move, though. Hitchcock is still relying on his audience to pay attention to the plot, even if the ultimate goal of the villains – the microfilm in the artifact – is rather inconsequential when we consider the amazing set pieces and the relationships. We are putting the conspiracy together as Thornhill does the same.
Of course, you can't talk about North By Northwest without mentioning the two most famous set pieces of the film. With Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock learned how one singular moment can define a film, but here he gives us two: the crop duster scene and the climactic chase on Mount Rushmore. The crop duster sequence is just one of the many examples of Hitchcock at the height of his powers, combining editing, directing and an amazing performance from Grant to keep the audience on their toes.
Hitchcock is one of the greatest directors of all time and any discussion of the greatest films ever made needs to have at least one Hitchcock. While Vertigo may be the best film Hitchcock ever made (the Sight & Sound poll says it's the greatest film ever made period), but I would rather watch North By Northwest any day before I pick up Vertigo. They are two incredibly different films and it might even seem inconceivable that they were made by the same man, but North By Northwest is the perfect example of why we're still talking about Hitchcock.
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