Review of North by Northwest (1959) by Francis L — 23 Jan 2012

Hitch's slickest film and a pure joy from start to finish. Hitchcock uses one of his signatures as an auteur, the 'innocent man' plot line, to hang his extremely well crafted suspense sequences on. Whilst not exactly an 'every man', Cary Grant is cast perfectly as a man who accidentally stumbles into the crazy world of espionage, playing the role with the usual energy, swarveness and light comedic sensibility that you would expect from a Cary Grant performance from this period - aged like a fine wine! Other notables include the brilliant James Mason as the films villain who manages to bridge that gap from being a formidable baddie whilst providing a comedic counterpoint to Cary Grant - a tradition we'd see continue later in the James Bond film series. Martin Landau plays a henchman character - interesting because Hitchcock paints the character as so obviously homosexual, everything from the clear 'affection' that Landau's character has for Mason's character, another tip off includes a line that references his 'female intuition' - very clever of Hitchcock to sneak this one past the censors, of course it wasn't the first time - see the main villains in Rope for another example. Eva Marie Saint plays the Hitchcock blonde with a kind-of icy sassy mysteriousness - very cool and very sexy, one of my favourite Hitchcock female characters.

The crop duster sequence is, of course, a classic. You tend to hear a lot about the bits where the plane is chasing Grant through the crop field, but the build-up to those moments is equally superb. Ever noticed that the way Hitchcock frames the opening shot of this scene - the road is pointing in a 'north-west' direction. The same goes for the girders holding up the 'ledge' of the mansion towards the end of the picture.