North by Northwest (1959) 4.5 out of 5 stars

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau
Nominated for three Oscars: Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction-Set Direction, and Best Film Editing
IMDb’s Top 250: #75

In the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. There’s only expedient exaggeration—Roger Thornhill

Roger Thornhill (Grant), a Madison Avenue ad man, is meeting some friends for drinks when suddenly, two armed thugs kidnap him away to the estate of someone named Townsend, where he is accused of being a spy named George Kaplan. Foreign spy Phillip Vandamm (Mason) and his henchman Leonard (Landau) try to dispose of Thornhill, but he escapes, thus beginning a cat-and-mouse hunt across America while Thornhill gets tangled up in a plot including a mysterious blonde named Eve (Saint), the FBI, and Mount Rushmore.

What other image was I going to put here? Even if you’ve never seen the film, you know this still.

This film is almost perfect. We’ll get to the glaring deficiency that denies it a 5/5 rating in a second.

As it’s been with every Hitchcock movie I’ve seen (39 Steps, Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope), North by Northwest kept me on my seat the whole time, which is no mean feat considering its 2:15 hour runtime. Even the opening sequence—several shots of an almost impossibly busy, crowded New York City—serves to create a sense of anxiety, and plants the seed in your brain that yeah, it would be super easy to just disappear in crowds like that. The narrative was full of twists and turns that I genuinely didn’t see coming; Hitchcock didn’t earn his “Master of Suspense” moniker for nothing.

I’m ashamed to say that before this, I had never seen a Cary Grant movie, and now I’m even more ashamed. He’s just so cool in this movie. Snappy one-liners. Calm, cool, and collected. This film made me a fan of his.

Eva Marie Saint is perfect as the mysterious seductress; along with the spy narrative, her chemistry with Grant could be precursors to the structure of James Bond films. She’s sexy, strong-willed, aloof, witty—sound familiar?

The supporting cast is super strong as well. James Mason is the perfect, sinister, cultured villain. Martin Landau is the creepy but well-spoken henchman. Jessie Royce Landis is funny as Roger’s indifferent mother. All of this, along with Hitchcock’s textbook direction and Ernest Lehman’s script—full of snappy dialogue, grand, sweeping shots and beautifully colored sets, tense plot twists—creates one of Hitchcock’s most iconic and crowning achievements. It could have been perfect.

But it’s not. All because of literally the last 10 seconds. Obviously spoilers ahead.

So Eve is hanging off of the edge of George Washington’s cheekbone (or something). Roger goes down to help her but slips as well. The both of them are dangling off a cliff, Roger hanging on with one hand. Leonard makes his way down to them; Roger pleads with him to help them. Leonard, being the villainous prick he is, starts to slowly crunch down on Roger’s danglin’ hand. All looks lost, but then, a shot rings out! Leonard Wilhelm-screams over the edge to the forest below. They’re saved! Roger tells Eve to hold on, that they’ll be alright—floaty dreamy cut to them making out on a train. The End.

What. The. Fuck. Mr. Hitchcock. I feel cheated.

Fun fact: While filming Vertigo (1958), Sir Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and “Vertigo” star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this movie until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before “officially” offering him the role in this movie. Stewart had no choice. He had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.

Why you should watch it: If you’re into James Bond films (it really is like, the first one); if you love a good suspenseful spy movie; if you now have a major crush on Cary Grant

Why you shouldn’t: If thrillers give you anxiety; if the injustice of mistaken identity really bums you out; if you’d be disappointed that the Glen Cove Police Department wouldn’t accept “assault with a gun and bourbon and a sports car” as a legitimate charge