North by Northwest

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

North By Northwest is a 1959 MGM film about an ordinary Manhattan businessman, Roger Thornhill (played by Cary Grant), who is mistaken for a government agent and ends up being pursued by spies who want to kill him. Thornhill is framed for murder and is forced to elude the police as well as the secret agents. The film has several plot twists and a sly sense of humor, as well as a number of famous scenes, including one in which Grant's character is chased by a crop duster, and another in which Grant and leading lady Eva Marie Saint clamber over the faces of Mount Rushmore in an attempt to evade their enemies.

Grant on the run, trying to travel incognito

The film stars Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, and Martin Landau. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman. The film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock as a follow-up to the dark and enigmatic Vertigo. In an interview with Francois Truffaut ("Hitchcock / Truffaut"), Hitchcock said that he wanted to do something fun, light hearted, and free of the symbolism permeating his other movies. Despite its frothy appearance, the movie carries a number of underlying themes, the most important being that of theater and play-acting, wherein everyone is playing a part; no one is who they seem; and identity is in flux. This is reflected by Thornhill's line: "The only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead."

Grant was distressed with the way the plot seemed to wander aimlessly, and actually approached Hitchcock to complain about the script. "I can't make heads or tails of it", he said, without realizing that he was quoting the very words he would speak when playing the role of Thornhill.

There are similarities between this movie and Hitchcock's earlier film Saboteur (1942), whose final scene on top of the Statue of Liberty foreshadows the Mount Rushmore scene in the later film. In fact, North By Northwest can be seen as the last and best in a long line of "wrong man" films that Hitchcock made according to the pattern he established in The 39 Steps (1935).

North By Northwest is one of several Hitchcock-directed movies with a film score by Bernard Hermann (the others include Psycho and Vertigo). The film also features a famous title sequence by the graphic designer Saul Bass.

North by Northwest is #40 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies, #4 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, and is consistently in the top 25 on the Internet Movie Database's Top 250. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.