Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest: How do you rate it after all these years?

Almost a companion film to The 39 Steps. Fun, exciting, etc.

The crop-duster sequence is one of my favorite scenes in any film. Cary Grant standing out in the middle of nowhere, alone, and you just know something's gonna happen. Great suspenseful build-up.

 

What he said!

 

Why ruin the fun? If I never stopped and thought about it long enough to be bothered by it before there's no reason to start now. I'm sure I could pick nearly any movie apart and find things that seem to be convenient plot devices (why would Josh Brolin get out of bed in the middle of the night to bring a dying drug trafficker some water?!?!?). If a movie is good enough it will carry you beyond the realm of rational thought. You take the bait and let the filmmaker have his or her way with you. Alfred Hitchcock films are suspense fantasies. Logic schmogic. I just go with the flow and enjoy.

 

Great, great scene!
It's funny but when I was saw that scene for the first time I thought it was kinda silly. I mean, seriously? Trying to kill a man with a crop duster? What I failed to grasp back then was that normality and common sense are not supposed to be taken into the equation when appraising this film. The movie is nothing but a pure fantasy. All you have to do is turn that smart-ass part of your brain off and enjoy the ride!

 

The whole paranoid aspect, with such elaborate measures being taken to create a ruse, is just brilliant. All his best have a very empathetic way into the plot.

 

I completely agree with everything you said.

 

I've read that before. She really looks like his older sister.

 

That music! Classy, exhilarating and suspenseful after all these years. Grace Kelly would have been a better leading lady though.

1) Vertigo
2) Rear Window
3) North By Northwest
4) Psycho
5) Frenzy

 

One of the best - and the fact it doesn't foreground the psychology in the way Vertigo does makes it all the more effective.

My current Hitch top Five

Strangers on a Train
North by Northwest
The 39 Steps
Psycho
Suspicion

 

Psycho was more financially successful and was released after North By Northwest. I'm pretty sure that The Birds also made quite a bit of money, but not as much as Psycho or NBN.

 

It is easily my favorite Hitchcock film and the third best film I've ever seen.

It is almost like an Ian Fleming novel if the author swapped out Bond for a innocent, clueless man on the street.

I love this so much, I even forgive it the cop-out climax!

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

Vertigo is probably better artistically but not as exciting to watch.

 

Psycho? Worldwide ? Stats?

 

A classic, just for the crop duster scene.

Suspension of disbelief? You need to turn off your brain partially to enjoy even the finest works ( say "Breaking Bad"), or shut it down entirely for the worst ("Under The Dome")

Is it Hitch's best? I don't know. But, I get caught up in NXNW's spell every time.


Dan

 

I like just about everything about NXNW - I particularly like Grant in this one, I love his suits and his interpretation of a guy stuck in this bizarre circumstance. I also really like the architecture of the Wright house at the end - I want to live there!

It probably isn't my favorite Hitchcock but I had to think about it for a second - it might be my favorite when I wake up tomorrow.

One real point in it's favor is that the BluRay reissue is magnificent looking - I might watch this next movie night, it has been a while.

 

I love it and still think it is great.

I watched it with my 18 year old daughter, who had never seen it before. She said that it seemed impossibly slow paced, so much so that she could barely stand it. She said that it seemed deliberate in the extreme, compared to all of the newly released films she has seen in the past five years.

 

That movie is like a beautiful woman in a great dress but she doesn't always make sense when she talks, but it doesn't really matter. I love this film.

 

Among my favorite movies ever. This and Rear Window are my favorite Hitchcock movies.

 

I say this with deepest respect: I don't understand not liking this movie. It's basically incomprehensible to me. I mean, what can one possibly want that it doesn't deliver?

This is, of course, an irrational comment -- I dislike so many movies that everyone could say the same thing about. But really. This thing is so much fun, I'm not sure I wanna hang out with a hater.

 

There's a famous essay from writer Ernest Lehman on all the huge plot holes and misleading moments in North by Northwest, and he and Hitchcock had a lot of laughs constructing the film. Whenever Lehman would say, "but Hitch, this makes no sense! The audience will realize the story has no logic!" And the great director would smile and say, "they'll only figure it out as they're walking back to their cars. And by then, we've already got their money!"

On the long list of things that make no sense, why send Cary Grant all the way to a Kansas cornfield to shoot him from a cropdusting plane? Why not just have a car drive by and shoot him in the head? Because the latter is not cool and suspenseful. Why try to kill Cary Grant by forcing him to drink an entire bottle of booze and then putting him behind a car? Because it's exciting.

This is just a rollercoaster ride you have to simply accept. As much as I insist on story logic, at some point you gotta roll your eyes and go with it. It's a classic.

Tell mer not to try to watch any movie made before 1980.

 

I prefer pre-1980 film pacing.

It's a classic, it's great fun and I could care less about plot holes or logic in a supreme entertainment like this.

Another example is The Big Sleep, the mystery doesn't really make sense and one of the murders is never solved...but it's so amazingly entertaining that it doesn't matter.

 

This is my favorite movie.
My top 10 list changes with my mood.
This is always #1.

 

I look forward to watching it with someone who hasn't seen it before. How can you not love it? Cary's in someone's hotel room and answers the phone - the baddies think (with some justification) that he's someone else. He says I'm not. They say 'then why are you answering his phone?'. Brilliant. Sorry if this reads badly, but I love the frustration of the mistaken identity thing...Cary finds it ridiculous too, so there's the humour, the tension, the action, all waiting to be explored...If you haven't seen it, I can't write too much, as there's too many good bits. OK, the United Nations...that's all I'll write.

 

James Mason and Leo G Carroll...how can you go wrong?

 

Like it but not top 5 hitch for me. Solid b. Crop duster scene is impeccable though and love the sexy banter between grant and Eva Marie saint