#55 ‘North by Northwest’
Suave Men, Silent Women, and the Travelogue of a Narcissist in Peril
North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his slickest—an elegant, fast-paced thriller draped in grey flannel and Cold War paranoia, where the plot zigzags like a drunk on a sleeper train and the leading man escapes death with nothing but charm, cheekbones, and casual sexism. It’s gorgeous. It’s iconic. And it’s a masterclass in how to construct suspense around a protagonist who never stops mistaking his own charisma for character development.
Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue ad man so deeply in love with himself he doesn’t notice he’s been mistaken for a spy until someone’s already tried to murder him over cocktails. He’s kidnapped, nearly killed, framed for murder, chased by a plane, and still finds time to flirt like he’s doing a spread for GQ: Fugitive Edition. His arc? Less about transformation than confirmation: the world keeps insisting he’s important, and by the end, he believes it.
The film’s real trick, of course, is convincing us to root for this walking embodiment of mid-century American ego. Thornhill is clever, yes, but also smug, oblivious, and about as emotionally available as a necktie. Every woman in his orbit is either decoration, danger, or doomed.
Enter Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), the icy blonde Hitchcock plucks from the factory of “cool girls who will risk their lives for men who treat them like crossword puzzles.” She’s beautiful, competent, sexually confident—and utterly written to serve Roger’s ego. A double agent? Maybe. A person? Barely. Their train flirtation is sleek, fast-talking innuendo at its best. But it’s also the blueprint for every rom-com that teaches women to fall in love with men who undermine them with a smirk.
Eve’s greatest betrayal isn’t of the spies or the state—it’s of herself, when she goes from playing both sides to swooning over a man who sees her as an accessory to his escape plan. She’s drugged, endangered, and repeatedly rescued, but the film treats her agency like a stylish trench coat: impressive, but ultimately meant to be removed by the man in charge.
And the villain? James Mason as the velvet-voiced mastermind, supported by Martin Landau’s barely-coded queer henchman who exists mostly to sneer and smirk. They’re delicious. They’re camp. They’re also punished by the narrative for their difference, because Hitchcock couldn’t imagine anything more menacing than elegance unmoored from heterosexual control.
Yes, the set pieces are legendary—the crop duster scene, Mount Rushmore, the auction house bluff. Bernard Herrmann’s score thrums with anxiety and irony. Hitchcock directs like a man who’s cracked the formula for sleek male fantasies of danger without consequence.
But North by Northwest isn’t really about espionage. It’s about how far a mediocre man can travel on charm alone—across states, across bodies, across plot holes—without ever having to reckon with himself. It’s glossy, thrilling, and more than a little smug.
3.5 out of 5 stolen identities
(One for Grant’s tailoring. One for the cinematography. One for that plane. Half a star for Eva Marie Saint trying to breathe life into a character written entirely in suggestive glances and cocktail napkins. The missing stars? Hanging off Mount Rushmore, waiting for a man to notice the world doesn’t actually revolve around his cufflinks.)
