alfred hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

The most interesting thing about North By Northwest as compared to Hitchcock’s other best-regarded thrillers is that it’s flippant, even silly; you can almost hear Hitch chuckling in the background of every scene. Part of this is naturally due to Cary Grant’s signature gentle self-parody, but both Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman are perfectly willing accomplices, allowing/encouraging Grant to defuse their expert suspense scenarios with outrageous aplomb. Megadosed with bourbon and put behind the wheel of a car, for instance, Grant’s Thornhill opts not to brake, but rather visibly settles in for a nice drunken drive, while later in the film an understated auction scene, rife with tension, is gleefully torpedoed (and cleverly resolved) with absurd outbursts and sucker punches. But despite Grant’s general goofiness and Eva Marie Saint’s censor-needling innuendoes, it’s Hitchcock that drolly steals show, thanks to the middle-of-nowhere duel between Grant and a rogue crop-duster; this implausible, leftfield plot detour has its company among his most iconic sequences, but as a synthesis of his stylistic virtuosity and formidable wit, it’s practically peerless. overall NxNW is a touch sloppier than his other major works, mostly due to the consistent stutter of its pacing (climaxing in a final narrative hiccup that never fails to disappoint) and an admitted overabundance of levity, but there's highlight reel moments a-plenty, and for what it's worth it's one of his broadest entertainments.