Produced by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by: Ernest Lehman
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Edited by: George Tomasini
Original Score: Bernard Herrmann
Distributed by: MGM
Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, Jessie Royce Landis, and Leo G. Carroll
DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
In New York City, a waiter pages George Kaplan at the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room after two thugs request him to do so. At that exact moment, advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) summons the same waiter and is mistaken for Kaplan. Kidnapped and taken to the Long Island estate of Lester Townsend, a United Nations diplomat, Thornhill is interrogated by Phillip Vandamm(James Mason), a suave spy posing as Townsend, and his watchful henchman Leonard(Martin Landau). Thornhill escapes, but when the real Townsend is murdered at the United Nations and collapses into Thornhill’s arms just as a photograph is taken, Thornhill becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, he must travel—literally—north by northwest, from New York to Chicago and finally to the Dakotas.
Screenwriter Ernest Lehman set out to write what he called “the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures,” and he succeeded. The film is a dazzling tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across America by a shadowy organization determined to smuggle microfilm—the film’s MacGuffin—containing government secrets out of the country. Grant, in one of his most iconic roles, anchors the film’s blend of suspense, wit, and glamour.
Martin Landau’s Leonard has long been a touchstone in queer Hitchcock analysis. Both Hitchcock and Landau deliberately coded the character with subtle homoerotic undertones. Leonard’s devotion to Vandamm is tinged with jealousy; he is suspicious of Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), Vandamm’s lover, and his protectiveness feels personal as much as professional. Hitchcock dressed Leonard in sharper, sleeker suits than Grant’s Thornhill, signaling refinement and control. Stylish and leonine, he circles Grant like a cat in their electric first scene together. His line about Thornhill—“He’s a well‑tailored one, isn’t he?”—is a sly acknowledgment of male beauty and one of the film’s most frequently cited queer-coded moments.
The late‑1950s Hitchcock team is at its artistic peak. Graphic designer Saul Bass revolutionizes the opening credits with kinetic typography. Eva Marie Saint, as Eve, gives Grace Kelly in Rear Window a run for her money as Hitchcock’s most elegant leading lady, and her chemistry with Grant is palpable. MGM initially selected her wardrobe, but Hitchcock disliked the choices; he and Saint went to Bergdorf Goodman to choose her costumes themselves. Hitchcock’s taste was impeccable—Saint’s wardrobe remains one of the most memorable in Hollywood history.
Jesse Royce Landis, superb as Thornhill’s mother, famously shaved a few years off her age, leading to the long‑held myth that she was younger than Grant. In fact, she was eight years his senior. Leo G. Carroll has several memorable moments as The Professor, a quintessential Hitchcock bureaucrat: calm, paternal, and ruthlessly pragmatic. Though he works for the U.S. government, he allows Thornhill to remain in danger because it serves the larger operation.
North by Northwest is Hitchcock at his most playful and most precise—a masterpiece of glamour, danger, and queer‑coded intrigue.
In fiction, a MacGuffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the characters’ motivation, but is insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. Angus MacPhail originated the term for FILM, which Hitchcock adopted. The term was later extended to literature.
Hitchcock’s cameo: 0:02:09. Missing a bus just after his credit passes off-screen during the opening title sequence.
There are some thrilling set pieces:
- Grant is chased by an airplane in a cornfield on a beautiful day. Nothing is unusual until you see the white trails of plane exhaust in a clear blue sky.
- Grant and Saint escape from James Mason (a superb Hitchcock villain) and Martin Landau on top of Mount Rushmore.
- The bidding scene in the Chicago auction house.
- The gun goes off in the Mount Rushmore gift shop, and the little boy puts his hands to his ears a millisecond before the shot – a rare Tomasini miss that makes the film more fascinating today.
- Grant tries to escape through a brilliant reconstruction of the United Nations, since Hitchcock was not allowed to film there.
- The final risqué shot of the train entering the tunnel as our stars finally consummate their relationship.
