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…

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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…

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…

Not a whole lot I can say about this one that hasn't been said already. North by Northwest is Alfred Hitchcock at his most spectacular and overblown. While generally regarded as the unquestioned "Master of Suspense", North by Northwest proves that he was also a giant when it came time to making an exciting action-adventure with two utterly spectacular set pieces that have gone down in the annals of film history. I'm talking, of course, about the incredibly iconic crop-duster sequence and the film's oft-imitated climatic sequence set high atop Mount Rushmore. Two sequences where filmmakers today are probably still scratching their heads wondering how in the hell he managed to pull it off. In a case of mistaken identity,…