100

(35mm)

North by Northwest is famous because of one scene. Now, that doesn't mean the rest of it is lacking, as it should be common knowledge of its solidified place in the canon of the greatest American films in the history of the cinema, but the zenith is found in a classic Hitchcock concept: the image of the pursuer and the pursued. Its famous sequence of a crop-duster aircraft leaping towards Cary Grant's Roger O. Thornhill in the Midwest countryside - bullets flying near his dives for survival - is constructed through the context of a world unknown: a place not designed for your color or creed or gender or social status. It is an environment, depicted via the…

Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest features a spellbinding first half which makes terrific use of clever humour, elevated tension & elements of mystery or suspense but is unfortunately marred by a lacklustre second half which bogs the story down with a dragged narrative & feels quite overlong in the end although it does have one spectacular sequence that'll be etched in memory once it's seen.

One of the first films to lay down the foundation of modern action thrillers in Hollywood, North by Northwest is a thrilling tale of mistaken identity which concerns an innocent advertising executive who is mistaken for a government agent by an organisation of foreign spies & is pursued by them. The story covers his journey of survival as…

Horizontal meets vertical as the title and crisscrossing credits propose. Cary Grant commits the greatest of horizontal acts (swiping into a cab) and tells the man a lie he's a hero for his immobility. The rest of the film turns a cosmic joke on the star as he runs from East to West in the identity of a man of a shorter suit. The camera arcs in a circular dance as he faces James Mason, the short stature man pulling his weight through lean Martin Laundau, who pours a tall bottle into Grant. "It's so horribly sad...why is it I feel like laughing?" an agent exclaims after a top down shot against the UN makes Grant a small dot in…

Part of Dastardly Difficult December: film nr.68

A benchmark in the action/adventure genre, crafted by one of cinema's masters.

I remembered next no to nothing from this film, apart from its iconic final sequence. It is therefore that I'm still reeling from being transported 50 years back and being swept along on this tale of mistaken identity, romance and espionage.

Hitchcock is of course know as the master of suspense, yet this is perhaps his least suspenseful film. It is, on the other hand, a very exciting adventure filled with the easy charm, class and simplicity of days gone by. I love the fact that practically from the get go, Hitchcock gives us one up on his protagonist. He understands…

98/100

No longer my favorite movie of all time—it's just too weightless for that honor—but still the most nonstop fun the medium has ever produced. Somebody somewhere referred to it as the first James Bond movie, and while it's in some sense absurd to compare a professional secret agent out to save the world with an innocent ad exec just struggling to stay alive, there are enough superficial similarities to make one wish for a 007 adventure as consistently witty and blessedly lull-free. (Hot on the heels of Bardem's hammy work in Skyfall, I also appreciated the low-key, urbane menace James Mason brings to his role as chief baddie here. In general, the more bored and blithely unconcerned a villain…

It's funny how as I read up on the movie afterward that I found this movie is often described as the "first James Bond movie" because when watching I literally felt the same way. Hitchcock sets up some of the common principles of the action/spy thriller in this film. Cary Grant stars in what is arguably one of the most charming onscreen personas of all time. This isn't only due to Grant, but also to one of the most cleverly written scripts I've come across in a while.

The story is wisely constructed and the dialogue is fresh, witty, & extremely humorous. In addition to the screenplay, the cinematography is up for high praise here as well. I often here people…

What a ridiculous world to fall into. While I was grasping at this thought the moment Thornhill's captors take him to meet Vandamm for the first time, and our leading man nonchalantly jokes the entire visit, I didn't fully realize how absurd the film really is until it came to its conclusion. It was one wild moment after another, from the main point that we don't know why Thornhill was decidedly George Kaplan to his slow but sure development as an actual secret agent of sorts and then to the ending of Thornhill and Kendall descaling Mount Rushmore.

The film plays as a comedy rather than a suspenseful thriller, in my opinion, and while there were plenty of lines I…