Rating: B
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Star: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll
I’m beginning to think that the word “classic” should be taken to mean a film which is one of the foundations of cinema, rather than one which is necessarily unsurpassed in its field. Oh, it can be, but it depends very much on the genre in question. Musicals, for example, aren’t particularly different from how they were sixty years ago. Something like My Fair Lady has not been done better since. The same likely goes for Westerns. But areas like horror and sci-fi have been radically redefined over that time. While we can still respect those OGs, Martyrs is a superior horror movie to Nosferatu. I will die on that hill.
Which brings us to North by Northwest, a staple on ‘best of’ lists, which was named the greatest thriller of all time as recently as 2022. It’s a dilemma. For the thriller elements might be near-perfect. But any time this tries to do action, it’s a painful reminder of how much better things are in that department nowadays. Take the crop duster sequence (top), lauded as iconic, and described at the above link as the film’s “killer moment”. I beg to differ. It’s an unconvincing combination of green screen and location work. It never generates much threat, and makes little story sense, because it’s a ludicrously complex means to the end: disposing of hero Roger Thornhill (Grant). Send out a competent guy with a sniper rifle. Problem solved.
Indeed, had the villainous Phillip Vandamm (Mason) any smarts, this would be considerably shorter than its 136 minutes. If the influence on future Bond films is apparent, this also likely extends to bad guys who repeatedly spurn chances to deal with their problems, except in unnecessarily complicated ways. Such is perhaps inevitable, given the film’s age. It was a different era – one where you could get into somebody’s room at a luxury hotel, by simply asking reception to give you a key. Yeah, I was gobsmacked by that, and also how different travel, in all its forms, was in those days. Smoking! Mostly courtesy of femme fatale Eve Kendall (Saint), because women who smoke are sluts, and should never be trusted. Insert “train going into tunnel” shot…
On the other hand, some elements and scenes remain impeccable. The transformation of Thornhill from advertising executive into wanted fugitive is perfectly plausible. Of course, I was watching this days after another high-profile murder in New York, which made me go “Hmmm…” at Thornhill being framed here [Another dated element: back when you could bring throwing knives into the United Nations!] The cold blooded shenanigans of the CIA, under the Professor (Carroll), perfectly happy to hang him out to dry for their own purpose, could come straight from something contemporary like Lioness. And good performances rarely date badly: there’s no one here who comes in below that line. Despite this, I would still rather watch almost any recent installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise. I’ll die on that hill too.