Alfred Hitchcock’s peak years were the 1950s, when he was utter master of his craft and he was privileged to make use of Hollywood’s best and brightest with the budgets to do them all justice.
From “Stage Fright” and “Strangers on a Train” through “The Man Who Knew Too Much,”The Wrong Man,” “Rear Window,” and “Vertigo,” he and “the system” cranked out classic after classic, enduring thrillers with iconic set pieces and often starring the greatest stars of their era.
And just as he was about to become a droll TV host, Hitch saw fit to remind us that he’d had a wicked sense of humor all long.
“The Trouble with Harry” might have been a stretch. But “To Catch a Thief” found him finally letting Cary Grant be Cary Grant — suave, dashing, sexy and witty. And that was but the appetizer for their collaborative masterpiece, 1959’s lightweight delight, “North by Northwest.”
It is an effortless two hours and sixteen minutes of classic set-pieces, unlikely traps and amusingly off-the-cuff escapes, all starring the handsomest tan ever to step onto a film set.
The working title was “In a Northwesterly Direction,” and the plot was just that simple. Introduce Cary Grant, put him in peril and set the chase in motion, from New York to Rapid City, South Dakota. We hardly notice when that linear path is interrupted and our anti-heroic hero has to backtrack from Chicago to rural Indiana, where the deadly crop-dusters roam.
Every element in this production is exquistive, from Ernest Lehman’s lighthearted, fizzy script to Bernard Hermann’s glorious “drunken fandango” of a score, to the immaculate production design that put Cray Grant in a single grey suit (save for the finale) and in peril indoors — on soundstages, rear projection car-chases, a mimicked train ride and a recreation of Mount Rushmore — or outdoors on a dusty crossroads in the middle of nowhere which produced the most iconic image of Hitchcock and Grant’s careers.
The VistaVision color pops off the screen 65 years later in a film whose seamless transitions between soundstages and locations are as much fun as the obvious “Hollywood trickery,” all in service of a beautiful-looking film that let us see Cary Grant run and climb and reel into sweaty, close-up panic.
Best of all, it’s deathly serious while never letting us, for one minute, truly fear for the hero’s safety. That’s because Grant has some of the best lines of his career in a movie that never wholly gives itself over to comedy.
When Eva Marie Saint, as Eve Kendall, comes on to Grant’s Roger O. Thornhill on a New York to Chicago train, the most modern words to come out of her mouth are “I’m a big girl, now.”
And Thornhill’s reply, in those oft-imitated Cary Grant cadences, is as naughty as he gets.
“Yaaaaas, and in all the right PLAY-sez.”
The story is a simple case of mistaken identity. Glib Madison Avenue Mad Man Roger Thornhill is mistaken for a mysterious agent named George Kaplan. Kaplan’s apparently been on the trail of this international menace named Van Damme. And fast-talking advertising man Roger (Grant) cannot talk himself out of the death sentence this mysterious Van Damme (the ever-urbane James Mason) hands down.
“Games, must we?” Van Damme coos when sizing-up this mysterious foe who has tracked him cross country, letting him know there’s no denying his fate.
It’s perfect that Van Damme has a homoerotic henchman played by future Oscar winner Martin Landau to carry out his dirty work, and hilarious that their execution of this threat is to be via alcohol. They pour bourbon down Roger’s throat and park him behind the wheel of a cute Mercedes convertible, which he somehow manages to drunkenly avoid driving off a cliff.
“Oh Roger, NOT Laura’s Mercedes?”
The cover-up ensures that nobody believes Thornhill’s story, and when he tries to unravel the mystery himself, he’s framed for murder, fleeing for his life, falling in with Eve Kendall, and making escapes from a train, a hospital, an art auction, a crop duster and Mount Rushmore.
“I don’t like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.”
Grant and his gray suit cut a dashing figure, start to finish, the classic man in over his head and improvising his way out of one jam after another.
This is why movies about “ex-special forces” types, women and men “with particular skills,” from Liam and Denzel to Jason and whoever, are by design less interesting than an Everywoman or Everyman who faces peril and thinks outside the box of their limited life to save his or her skin.
“North by Northwest” has intrigues guided by a mysterious “Professor,” played by past Hitchcock collaborator Leo G. Carroll, and a comical arrest and traffic court trial involing future “Get Smart” co-star Edward Platt as Roger’s nonplussed lawyer and Jesse Royce Landis as his amusingly disbelieving mother.
Scene after scene here has been mimicked or echoed in scores of films since, most particularly the art auction where Roger must rude-talk his way out of impending murder by drawing attention among the monied swells bidding on fine art.
And then there’s the cropduster sequence — tense, slow-building, masterfully shot and cut as it edits together aerial footage and ground-eye-view shots of a real biplane chasing and dusting and shooting at our protagonist, with snippets of Grant on a soundstage cornfield, running and ducking for his very life.
You can have your shower scene in “Psycho” and your falling effects from “Vertigo.” This is Hitchcock’s true tour de force sequence.
The film’s success and timeless presence ensured that three members of the cast would go on to star in TV shows about espionage — Platt, Carroll (“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) and Landau (“Mission: Impossible.”). Hitchock would transition to TV and make the classic “Psycho” TV budget cheap, and manage a few more bloated and off-his-game productions in the ’60s into the ’70s.
Grant was less than a handful of films from retirement. And Saint, of “On the Waterfront,” would never be in anything as remotely entertaining as this Peak Hitchcock classic, a thriller that set a high bar for every high-toned thriller/comedy to follow.
“North by Northwest” is quintessential Hitchcock, a single film that explains his reputation and that tells us why generations since still love the very idea of Cary Grant. And it’s a true bucket list classic, a gorgeous, perfectly-crafted thriller that entertains the first time you see it, and every time you watch it again.
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Leo G. Carroll, Edward Platt and Jesse Royce Landis
Rating: approved, violence, innuendo
Credits: Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, scripted by Ernest Lehman. A Universal release on Tubi, Amazon, etc.
Running time: 2:16
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