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MOVIE REVIEW

North by Northwest

also known as “Bắc Tây Bắc,” “Bugbugseolo Jinloleul Dollyeola,” “Con la muerte en los talones,” “CzechoNa sever severozápadní linkou,” “De dood op de hielen,” “De man die verdwijnen moest,” “Der unsichtbare Dritte,” See all »

Reviewed by: Brett Willis
STAFF WRITER

Moral Rating: Average
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Adults
Genre: Spy Thriller
Length: 2 hr. 16 min.
Year of Release: 1959
USA Release: December 18, 1959
Featuring Cary GrantRoger Thornhill
Eva Marie SaintEve Kendall
James MasonPhillip Vandamm
Martin LandauLeonard
Leo G. Carroll … The Professor
Edward Platt … Victor Larrabee
Edward BinnsCaptain Junket
Jessie Royce Landis … Clara Thornhill
Josephine Hutchinson … Mrs. Townsend
Philip Ober … Lester Townsend
See all »
Director Alfred Hitchcock
Producer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Distributor

This film is generally considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best pieces of work. Once the central character is mistaken for a spy, the pace never lets up.

Advertising exec Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), dining out with business associates, stands up to summon a waiter just as the name “George Kaplan” is being paged. The page was called in by Communist spies who are trying to intercept the Western agent, Kaplan, before he exposes them.

The bad guys (including James Mason and Martin Landau) immediately abduct Thornhill, grill him, drug him and attempt to send him over a cliff in a stolen car. Thornhill escapes; but in setting out to prove his innocence of car theft, he is later accused of murder.

Now he journeys across the country, on the run from the Soviet spies as well as the police and the FBI, trying to find the real Kaplan and set everything straight. Memorable scenes include the U.N. confrontation, the lethal crop-duster plane and the Mount Rushmore chase.

Content of concern

There are a few on-screen killings. Thornhill uses d* a few times. A U.S. spy agency, realizing that Thornhill is in trouble because of mistaken identity, decides to let him be killed rather than have an agent’s cover blown.

The agency also requires a female agent to “spy with her body.” Thornhill meets the mysterious Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on a passenger train, and the mutual seduction scene in the dining car is very similar to the restaurant scene in “Fatal Attraction” 30 years later, even to Thornhill lighting Eve’s cigarette and Eve resting her hand too long over his.

The result is also the same, except that it’s not shown explicitly. This scene, and the implied sex afterward, were very bold for 1959. The old sexual double standard is here; Thornhill looks down on Eve for doing the same thing that he does.

The film ends abruptly; the action cuts from the spy vs. spy finale to the newly-married heroes getting into a passenger train sleeping car berth, and then to an exterior shot of the train entering a tunnel. Hitchcock once deadpanned to a group of reporters that the interlock of the last two scenes was supposed to be a phallic symbol, but that they shouldn’t tell anyone.

I’d rate this film as very good in its category and not overly offensive for today’s audiences. The film hasn’t changed; but thanks to the work of Hitchcock and other “pioneers,” society’s standards have changed so that what was once outrageous is now considered tame.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
This 1959 movie is very much a pattern for the James Bond films that came after it. Though more tame than Bond, most of the same elements are here. There are action, adventure and intrigue aplenty and the pace is non-stop.

There are also many elements of a worldview that is contrary to godliness. Cary Grant’s character has been married twice and makes light of his divorces (“they left because I was too boring”). Eva Marie Saint’s character fornicates with both Grant and Mason. In neither case is there remorse shown or any consequences associated with this lifestyle.

Grant uses profanity and smokes. The ideas that casual sex is desirable, that divorce is trivial, and that the rugged individualist may take matters into his own hands and disregard authority is overtly taught.

Though Hitchcock was masterful at making movies, his work is very much like the candy coating that smuggles in ideas that teach against God’s instruction.

The “value” of this movie is in its excitement, but it is not worth the exposure to false instruction. My Ratings: [2/4]
David Hawkins, age 39

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in Christian Spotlight reviews are those of the reviewers themselves, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Christian Answers.

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