On "North by Northwest" (1959)

Cary Grant tries to avoid a plane that has apparently lost control of itself

Star Rating: ****
I don’t know about you, but there is nothing I find more upsetting than starting my day by being abducted by secret agents and who think that I’m someone that I’ve never even heard of. In this way I sympathize very much with Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill in Alfred Hitchcock’s "North by Northwest".

Now here is an espionage film. Thrilling and exciting. Beautifully told with exquisite and stylish directing from Hitchcock, it has an intriguing plot-line in which United States governmental secrets are at stake. I was lucky enough to see this film shown at the first Turner Classic Movies film festival in Hollywood in April 2010. The experience was intensified by the presence of the movie’s co-stars Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau, who talked about their experiences making this film.

Robert Osborne with Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau at Grauman's Chinese Theater for a showing of "North by Northwest" (1959); April 25, 2010

Now for the movie itself. Cary Grant plays an innocent advertising agent who is unwillingly and unknowingly drawn into a spy chase across the United States when he is mistaken for a secret agent he had never heard of. Due to this mistake, he meets numerous calamities—being forcefully intoxicated, being framed for a murder he did not commit, and almost being shot down by an airplane. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with Eva Marie Saint, who is the mysterious and inviting woman in the train compartment across the hall. She also happens to be a secret agent apparently involved with the team assigned to kill Grant. As Eva herself said at the TCM film festival, “Who doesn’t want to play a sexy spy lady?”

Nobody can play a smooth talking and nefarious villain quite like James Mason. Five years earlier, he favored the screen with his portrayal of the unstable Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Here he plays the smooth smuggler who is on the run from the United States government. Mason paves the way for the similar low key, nefarious cinematic portrayal of Dr. Julius No by Joseph Wiseman in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, three years after "North by Northwest".

At Mason’s side is his faithful right-hand man, Martin Landau. When the film was shown at the festival in 2010, Landau explained that his character had been intentionally written as a homosexual. This was not supposed to be obvious to the audience, nor did it interfere with his role in the movie. However he does give the audience a hint as to his orientation with the line, “Call it my woman’s instinct.”

Secondary to all of the excitement of "North by Northwest" is its humor. Cary Grant’s dialogue is usually couched with witty cynicism as he desperately tries to find out what is happening to him throughout the movie. Couple that with his playful banter with Eva Marie Saint, who “never discusses love on an empty stomach.”

There is also humor in scenes that are meant to be dead serious. At the festival in 2010, Ms. Saint reminisces about one such scene, in which she prepares to shoot Cary Grant. The setting is a crowded café, and as soon as she draws her gun, a boy in the background, who had obviously been there during rehearsals, immediately covers his ears. However, when the gun goes off a moment later, he had removed his hands from his ears. Despite his crew’s insistence that Hitchcock redo the scene, he just left that scene in the movie, and he did right by doing so. It is perfect comic relief.

With action, suspense, humor and romance on its side, "North by Northwest" is a knockout. Dare I say that this even tops the James Bond series?