North By Northwest
In a day when the market is flooded with action suspense thrillers featuring an everyman character running for his life from bad guys both real and imagined, it’s a wonder if any moviegoers today have ever taken the time to check out the movie that started the whole thing, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic that was one of a kind back in its day, and despite a few concessions to its era like costumes, cars, and people smoking openly in public places (like the UN!) can still hold its own to the CGI shitfests that get churned out in the current environment. Cary Grant, truly a classic old school movie star and a real pimp when it comes to charming the ladies, had the best role of his career as Roger O. Thornhill, Madison Avenue advertising executive, who through a case of mistaken identity gets targeted by a group of spies for being the intelligence agent on their trail. Hitchcock keeps the movie afloat by adopting the same strategy of the later Bourne movies, always having his main character on the run and looking over his shoulder even when he tries to settle down and rest, knowing when to build suspense and anticipation while satisfying our need for big setpieces when the time is right. During his adventure Thornhill meets up with a sexy double agent played by Eva Marie Saint, and her flirty, daringly unafraid attitude (combined with her great ass) entices the viewer to care just as much about her as Thornhill does, and enables us to cheer him on when the time arrives that he has to come to her rescue, as Hitchcock and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ernest Lehman brilliantly make it a point to have the viewer actually CARE about the characters once the action kicks in (unlike today), and the sizzling chemistry between the two leads doesn’t hurt either. As the evil head of the espionage ring, James Mason (so underrated for his body of work even today) brings a silky smoothness to the proceedings, mockingly arrogant from his first scene on, and he’s ably supported by (a very young) Martin Landau as his subtly homosexual henchman dedicated to protecting his boss’s interests at all costs and let’s not forget Leo G. Carroll as the CIA contact who realizes it’s in the mission’s best interests to let the unwitting decoy Thornhill remain in the field. Much has been made over the years about the legendary sequence where Thornhill is nearly killed by a crop duster, but this viewer rather prefers the thrilling climax at Mt. Rushmore instead, for as iconic as the crop duster scene is, it seems rather odd and impractical for the bad guys to try to kill off a loose end in that way in the middle of nowhere when just sending a team of gunman to pull up in a car or truck and shoot him down would have been much more efficient. Regardless, it is all an example of Hitchcock’s ability to play the audience like a violin, along with the beautiful cinematography by Robert Burks and the sweeping, magnificent music score by the legendary Bernard Herrmann. Best of all is the fact that for a 1950s film clocking in at 2 hours and 16 minutes, the pacing and length never wear on the viewer, helped greatly by Lehman’s dialogue which consists of a lot of sparkling repartee. Overall, one of the benchmarks of cinema that every young person should be made to watch because they will probably enjoy it so damn much…
9/10