We decided to watch North by Northwest as the second feature. I'm very glad, as I'd forgotten what a stylish and witty film it is.
Cary Grant is the perfect Hitchcockian hero: urbane and debonair, facing calamity without a hair out of place. Eva Marie Saint, like Grace Kelly before her, beautiful, blonde, and mysterious, is his perfect foil. The McGuffin is bigger and more ambitious than ever; in this case, it takes over the whole plot, demonstrating what a film like The Fugitive would have been like in Hitchcock's canny hands.
North by Northwest is the classic mistaken identity/chase film, in which an advertising executive (divorced by two wives for dullness) becomes entangled in the spy world's wilderness of mirrors, where nothing is what it seems, especially one's friends. We are so caught up in the action that the fact that there is no plot to speak of is completely incidental. Bolstered by amazing cinematography and a suberb supporting cast, including Leo G. Carroll, James Mason, and Martin Landau, North by Northwest rockets along at a pace that doesn't allow us to draw breath until the very last frame.
It was a wonderful change of pace.
