ViewGuide

Created Mar 25, 2009 09:42AM PST • Edited Mar 25, 2009 09:45AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock combine in a great caper movie – maintaining just enough menace to be thrilling in the vein of Hitchcock’s best movies, yet also featuring much comedy. The acting class on display only adds to the movie’s excellent reputation.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint star and contribute the best performances, along with a strong supporting cast including James Mason, Martin Landau and Leo G. Carroll.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

   Grant is wholly deserving of his reputation – and George Clooney, despite taking many similar roles in his career, has nothing on him. Starring as Roger Thornhill, a city man mistaken for someone else, Grant conveys the sense of a wholly bewildered yet ingenious man caught up in something far bigger than he can imagine. The actor strongly conveys his hold on comedy, with much of the film’s witty humour and sexual charge coming from him.

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

   Eva Marie Saint, as Eve Kendall (the somewhat femme-fatale of the piece) counteracts Grant as a strong female lead – despite the initial assumptions, she’s deeper than we think, and the actress does brilliantly well to portray such a conflicted character. Her scenes with Grant present some incredibly charged encounters – some of which could clearly be seen as raunchy for the time, but perhaps less so now – a testament to her performance as well as his.

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

   Adjusted for score.

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

   James Mason, as villain Phillip Vanndamm, exudes ruthlessness with a hint of charm, giving what could have been a stock movie villain a sense of class and ambiguity. His assistant Leonard, played by a young Martin Landau, provides a deadly and somewhat ominous performance to the movie that lends it its more sinister scenes, whilst an accomplice to Thornhill, the Professor, is played by Leo G. Carroll, who presents his character as the stereotypical old gent, but one who is, much like many other characters here, deeper than at first impressions.

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Hitchcock crafts another hit movie with his trademark mix of tension and strong performances – and the addition of comedy to this mixture only serves to make the film stronger.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    Hitchcock presents a lighter side to his film-making here, with a movie not only shot in colour but featuring much comedy and goofing around that he is not known for. However, the darker sides of his direction are not lost, and the film’s main plot holds many dark mysteries and discoveries for Thornhill. All in all, the famous director shows his flexibility and diversity in North by Northwest – it’s a shame that he didn’t make more films like this.

12. Play Great 4.0

    Grant’s Thornhill gets the best lines by far – his putdowns and sarcasm towards the men mistaking him for someone else are witty and damning. Much of the suggestive dialogue between the leads is also impressive, and quite raunchy in its suggestions for its time.

13. Music Great 4.0

    As with many other Hitchcock movies, Bernard Herrmann contributes the fantastic score, and the memorable theme sits alongside his past collaborations on Psycho and other such Hitch films.

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5

    Shot in colour, and quite often on location or in a convincing sound stage, this movie is brilliantly visualised from the opening credits onward. It’s a shame that for the final set-piece of the movie Hitchcock wasn’t allowed to shoot in the real location he wanted to – as the obvious matte paintings are pitifully fake.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.4

    Despite the adult themes of much of the plot, the film is suitable for any audience.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Polite 1.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.9

    Mistaken identity is an interesting plot point to consider in terms of reality – could one person indeed be put through all this? It’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

23. Biological Glib 1.9

24. Physical Glib 1.9