Greatest Movies of all Time Review: North By Northwest (1959)

It is one of my current ambitions to watch all of the movies generally regarded as the greatest movies of all time, and in that spirit of self-improvement through the consumption of the cinematic arts, I am watching everything on the IMDB Top 250 Checklist - seen as star-man.org. The list tends to fluctuate a fair amount but the big ones never change. I won't have time to go through them all as I have made a fair amount of progress so far - 102 of 250; the one hundred and second of which I watched yesterday.

North By Northwest (1959) in a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Known as a suspense-thriller, it is about a case of mistaken identity where Roger Thornhill (Carey Grant) is pursued by a mysterious group of individuals who make several attempts to murder him. He finds himself tangled in a web of secrets and lies as the government uses him as an unwitting decoy for their espionage operations.

Now I've been very patient with some of these movies. Some are boring, some have some technological achievement that makes them noteworthy on the cinematic timeline and others deal with unusual or controversial themes for the first time in the mainstream. I cannot, however, understand why this movie made the list.

Hitchcock is known for making suspenseful, terrifying, and otherwise interesting films that keep you on the edge of your seat and your pants on the verge of turning yellow. I hadn't seen Psycho until last year and I found it genuinely compelling - the final twist at the end actually had me reacting in a loud (and most definitely manly) fashion.

North By Northwest however, is boring. Uninteresting. Without remarkable qualities, and seems to be nothing but a way to watch Carey Grant do his macho thing for two hours. The characterisation is utter garbage;  we, the audience, are given no earthly reason to care about what happens to anyone in the story as everyone is one-dimensional and flat. They also make little sense - after an hour of unknown people trying to kill him, Roger Thornhill defies common-sense and trusts some random woman who shelters him and wants to engage in wanton acts of promiscuity. I'm left scratching my head as to why he would stand in the middle of that empty field, wondering where his contact is. This is not to say that easy women can't be trusted - just that with everything that has happened to him so far, his trusting anyone is moronic at best.


The cinematography, as in all Hitchcock films, is excellent; scenes, props and wardrobes are all extremely effective at filling the mood - it's just too bad that they forgot to put in the mood in the first place!


Perhaps no one had ever done a chase scene on top of Mount Rushmore before. Or had an unmarried pair of people have vigorous and unprotected sex off screen in a movie.


It definitely doesn't get its status from its theme, which is something along the lines of "COLD WAR - BAD! MAKING LOVE - GOOD!"


You know what I would do if someone tried to kill me and then framed me for murder? I'd go to him, make a deal offering to self secrets to the Russians with him, and then spike his tea with a million sugars. That way, when he's in the toilet and overdoses on sucrose, I'd run in and bludgeon him to death with the nearest faucet. And THEN I'd sell the microfilm to the Russians and make a killing. See, the whole movie was about the government screwing over one of its citizens. A little bit of retributive treason would teach them to value their citizenry better than ruining one of their covert ops like Mr Thornhill did.


If you want to watch a good suspense Hitchcock film, watch Rear Window. If you want to watch a good suspense film about the Cold War, try the Manchurian Candidate (the one with Frankie, not Denzel). 


Trust me when I say you can miss this one.