North by Northwest

North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures". North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle microfilm, which contains government secrets, out of the country. This is one of several Hitchcock films that feature a music score by Bernard Herrmann and an opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass, and was the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits. North by Northwest is listed among the canonical Hitchcock films of the 1950s and is often listed among the greatest films of all time. It was selected in 1995 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". After its first screening, reviewers for The New Yorker and The New York Times immediately hailed it as a masterpiece of comedic, sophisticated self-parody. In 1958 New York City, a waiter pages "George Kaplan" at the Plaza Hotel's Oak Room restaurant after a pair of thugs presumably requests him to do so. As advertising executive Roger Thornhill summons the same waiter, he is mistaken for Kaplan, kidnapped by the thugs and brought to the estate of Lester Townsend. He is interrogated by spy Phillip Vandamm, a Cold War enemy of the United States, who poses as Townsend to Thornhill. Vandamm arranges Thornhill's death in a staged drunk-driving crash. Thornhill survives, but fails to convince his mother and the police about the happenings, even after revisiting Townsend's estate. During the visit, Thornhill learns Townsend is a United Nations diplomat. Thornhill and his mother go to Kaplan's empty hotel room at the Plaza.

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Related concepts (7)

Charade (1963 film)

Charade is a 1963 American romantic screwball comedy mystery film produced and directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres, suspense thriller, romance and comedy. Charade was praised by critics for its screenplay and the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn. It has been called "the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made".

North by Northwest

Classical Hollywood cinema

Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the latter years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 (with the advent of sound film) to 1969. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide. Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity.