Imagine: you are a handsome, successful ad man in 1950s New York, enjoying a snack at the Plaza Hotel, when two polite, well-dressed men abduct you at gunpoint. You do not resist; you merely walk to their car, politely asking them to stop. They are gleeful—they have finally captured George Kaplan. But that is not your name, you insist; you are Roger Thornhill. They must have the wrong man.
Thus begins Alfred Hitchcock’s funniest, most ridiculous and visually ambitious film, North by Northwest. All the hallmarks of a Hitchcock classic are here: Cary Grant as the leading man, a completely inexplicable MacGuffin (who is George Kaplan, and does anyone care?), a director cameo, a mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint), and a 20-minute opening so dense with dialogue that you tune out—but it is fine, because once the inciting incident occurs, you cannot look away. It is so Hitchcockian that it borders on parody.
Released in 1959, North by Northwest is clearly the work of a filmmaker who knows his success is preordained. He can go absurd, so why not? There is no reason Cary Grant should be free-climbing Mount Rushmore, dodging bullets from Lincoln’s nose after being chased across the US by an underground anti-government movement. Grant as Thornhill delivers one of the most underrated comedic performances of the 20th century. Every character he meets is working to screw him over, yet he remains surprised at every turn. He is like a bronzed Homer Simpson in a well-tailored suit, blindly walking into traps and believing he can talk his way out.
Despite being made under the conservative Hays Code, North by Northwest is hornier than any modern blockbuster. Grant and Saint can barely keep their hands off each other in a shared train carriage, and the film ends with a famously erotic shot of a steam train racing into a tunnel. In one of the film’s most storied scenes, Grant flees from an aeroplane in an epic chase through a cornfield. Out of context, it seems random and illogical. In context, it still makes no sense—why not just shoot him? But that is the core thesis: there is no reason other than it looks fabulous on screen. As long as it looks gorgeous and the stakes are high, reason can be shoehorned into anything.
