by Alicia Hollenbeck

Created on: May 07, 2009

By 1959, Alfred Hitchcock had already directed over 50 movies. Indeed, the 1950's was a fruitful decade for him, with such films as Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder. The decade culminated with one of his most popular films ever, North by Northwest.

The world of Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive from New York City, is thrown askew when he is mistaken for an intelligence agent named Kaplan. As he works his way out of a deadly situation, he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), whose fate is intertwined with his own. Together they battle Vandamme (James Mason), an Eastern European spy, for freedom, justice, America's safety and their very lives.

In North By Northwest, Hitchcock expertly crafts a blockbuster that is both intellectually and visually appealing. The protagonists are ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Thornhill is an average man with such mundane problems as an uninteresting job and a nagging mother. He is successful, well-to-do, but his life is boring, unimportant. Little is ever told about Kendall's life, except that she became part of the story simply because she happened to befriend Vandamme at a cocktail party. Similarly, little is known about Vandamme. The audience doesn't know where he's from, why he has confidential information about the nation's security, or even what that information is. The only thing the audience knows is that he shouldn't have this information.

By making the characters mundane, the situation vague, Hitchcock detracts the viewer from thinking about the past or the future, instead focusing the viewer on the present. The viewer doesn't need to know the background of the characters-they're average people that had average lives, as opposed to CIA operatives that had some deep motivation to spend years honing their skills; the villain is just a generic villain. By preventing the viewer from needing to think beyond the scope of the film, Hitchcock is able to add a subtlety to North by Northwest that the viewer easily catch, instead of having to piece everything together at the end.

To enhance the experience, Hitchcock uses fantastic landscapes and remarkable cinematography. Early in the film, Hitchcock meticulously details a late-night chase scene on a winding road down the side of the mountain. He then uses clever angles to show how large the UN building is, and how small Thornhill is in comparison, literally showing the viewer the "big picture". Hitchcock stuns the audience by chasing Thornhill down with a crop duster, creating one of the most famous images of film history-Cary Grant running down a road, deserted save for the plane just a couple yards behind him. The film culminates with Mount Rushmore, at first seen from afar through a telescope, then with abrupt close-ups as the heroes dangle from the presidents' faces.

North by Northwest is a film everyone should see, whether they're film enthusiasts or simply flipping through the channels late at night. Its easy to understand story leaves no one out and the cinematography will amaze anyone.

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