By Trent Lakey
It’s easy to take a film like NORTH BY NORTHWEST, or any of the greatest Alfred Hitchcock films, for granted. They’ve been discussed and written about for decades; they pop up on lists of the greatest films ever put to celluloid, from official rankings curated by critics, scholars and esteemed filmmakers — such as Sight and Sound, or AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list — to the more pedestrian, dilettanteish lists of freshly anointed cinephiles still forming their tastes and opinions. It’s natural to forget a classic like this amid the pursuit of new cinematic discoveries, or to resist popular opinion in favor of spotlighting lesser-seen gems. But it is just as easy to remember how wonderful NORTH BY NORTHWEST is.
From its opening frames, it’s clear why this film stands in the upper echelon of Hitchcock’s films, alongside masterworks such as VERTIGO, REAR WINDOW and NOTORIOUS. Everything is finely tuned and surgically designed, yet never mechanical, with all the power of Hollywood and Cary Grant behind it, creating an absurdist odyssey through the highways and landmarks of 20th-century America. With a bumbling, bemused protagonist and a narrative that begins like a tale from Kafka before morphing into a James Bond adventure, Hitchcock redefined the standard for Hollywood cinema: an engrossing, witty spectacle, a fantastic fable that suspends the woes of reality in favor of a romantic, and somewhat perilous, journey toward love, happiness and the place where movies reside.
In a film like this, it makes sense for the protagonist, Roger Thornhill (Grant), to fall easily for a luminous blonde (the wonderful Eva Marie Saint) aboard a train bound for Chicago. If we can believe in the most fanciful of romances, then we can believe in a killer crop duster flying over the Indiana plains, or in lovers evading death while climbing down Mount Rushmore.
Hitchcock had, in fact, made many films similar to this one. There was THE 39 STEPS and THE LADY VANISHES, both made in London in the 1930s; there was FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT and SABOTEUR, involving men on the run, sometimes through America, sometimes elsewhere. Sometimes his protagonists were chasing something rather than being chased themselves, though through Hitchcock’s lens it often looked the same. He spent his entire career building toward NORTH BY NORTHWEST, toward the zenith of his work and obsessions through one of his most entertaining and endearing films. Somehow, it isn’t even his best film, but it may be the one most representative of his overarching cinematic spirit.
And it is still true that NORTH BY NORTHWEST is one of the towering achievements in film history, celebrated for its ingenious, symphonic form, narrative wit and aesthetic grace. Yet among the canonized greatest films, there may never have been one so relentlessly enjoyable. It is fun! And it always will be, even if the world splits apart and people forget the name Hitchcock.
IPH is screening NORTH BY NORTHWEST as part of its film series The Anticipation of Fear: Alfred Hitchcock’s Essentials.