News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

USA: Pete Docter, 2009

IMDB reference

USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1959

I first came across North by Northwest many years ago, when staying up past 9 PM was a novelty. I happened to dip into an already underway TV broadcast of it, and my first introduction to Roger Thornhill was of him attempting to snag a railway ticket to Chicago while simultaneously evading the police. I had to go to bed shortly after this (it was a school night), and this being in the days before on-screen programme guides I never did find out which film this way. The sequence stuck in my mind, though, and years later, while taking a Media Studies class in my final year of school, I was glad to finally put a name to it when my teacher decided to give us a crash course in the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock.

Over the years, North by Northwest has emerged as one of my all-time favourite films. I'm not sure that it's Hitchcock's best work per se, but it's certainly one of his most gripping. It's one of those films that has a little of everything - humour, melodrama, action, suspense, intrigue, you name it - and as a result somehow feels like a remarkably complete package. Hitchcock supposedly told screenwriter Ernest Lehman to write "the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films", and in my opinion he succeeded. While "Hitchcock" will conjure up different images for different people (correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect most will probably think of the shower scene in Psycho or the bell-tower sequence in Vertigo), North by Northwest is always the first thing that comes to mind whenever I hear the Mster of Suspense's name mentioned. And no, it isn't the cornfield sequence or the climax atop Mount Rushmore. It's Cary Grant trying to buy a ticket to Chicago. Funny how memory works, isn't it?

IMDB reference

USA: Tom Holland, 1988

IMDB reference

More posts