North By Northwest (1959)

Film: North By Northwest

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Country: UK / USA

Released: July 1959

Runtime: 136 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Studio: Thriller

Influenced: Terence Young, Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Debra Granik

Hitchcock at this point in his directorial output reminds me very much of late-career Shakespeare, whose purple patch of plays within the space of five years in the early 1600s – including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth – is similar to the run of classic films that Hitchcock directed from Rear Window (1954) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) to Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). North by Northwest is a masterclass in cinematic suspense, with Hitchcock's trademark combination of humour, romance and danger creating an edge-of-the-seat experience.

Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, the film is a spy thriller with a story that revolves around an advertising executive, Roger Thornhill (played by Grant), who is mistaken for a government agent. When he is kidnapped and interrogated by a group of foreign spies led by the mysterious Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), Thornhill tries to prove his innocence and find out why he is being targeted. The Vandamm character seems to be the inspiration for every foreign-sounding Bond villain, while it's also clear that the train scene involving Eve Kendall (played by Eva Marie Saint) was also highly influential on the Bond franchise, laying the template for a series of double-crossing femme fatales. 

 

Thornhill goes to the United Nations to seek help from the authorities, but they do not believe his story. The composition in the scene after the stabbing at the UN building is breathtaking. Hitchcock's camera points down from the top of a high building over the entrance area of the hotel, with three yellow cabs waiting in the rank, a circular blue water feature and trees and pathways that form geometric shapes. Shots like this, as well as the film's many iconic scenes, its wonderful score by Bernard Herrmann and its cutting-edge opening credits, make it a joy to watch.

As the plot thickens, Thornhill and Kendall find themselves embroiled in a web of deceit and danger, involving a stolen microfilm containing top-secret information, a corrupt FBI agent and an attempt to smuggle the microfilm out of the country. There are moments of brilliant comic relief, such as the auction bidding scene, and moments of classic Hitchcock meta-commentary, like when one of the FBI agents says, "It's so horribly sad, why is it I feel like laughing?" In a climactic scene atop Mount Rushmore, Thornhill and Kendall face off against Vandamm and his men, with a dramatic fight sequence and an unforgettable finale.

PS: As much as I love Bond films and other highly-derivative film franchises, like Mission Impossible and Bourne, they won't be included in this list for lack of originality. In case it's of interest, my 5 favourite Bond films by each of the 5 main Bond actors are From Russia With Love (1963), For Your Eyes Only (1981), The Living Daylights (1987), GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006).