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North By Northwest | 
 enlarge | Actors: Ed Binns, Leo G. Carroll, Bill Catching, Philip Coolidge, Lawrence Dobkin
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $10.25
You Save: $9.73 (49%)
New (21) Used (16) Collectible (3) from $8.65
Rating:  308 reviews
Sales Rank: 1165
Format: Ac-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 136 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: D67099D
ISBN: 0790799936
UPC: 012569670990
EAN: 9780790799933
ASIN: B0002IQEHI
Theatrical Release Date: 1959
Release Date: September 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Cary Grant teams with director Alfred Hitchcock for the fourth and final time in this superlative espionage caper judged one of the American Film Institute's Top-100 American Films and spruced up with a new digital transfer and remixed Dolby Digital Stereo. Grant plays a Manhattan advertising executive plunged into a realm of spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint) and variously abducted framed for murder chased and in another signature set piece crop-dusted. He also holds on for dear life from the facial features of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore (backlot sets were used). But don't expect the Master of Suspense to leave star or audience hanging.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569670990
Amazon.com essential video
A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire? --Jim Emerson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 303 more reviews...
 now this is entertainment! November 9, 2008
peter andronas (canada)
It's the story of a man, who through a series of misunderstandings and coincidences becomes a victim of a spy and espionage set-up. When you first watch North By Northwest you may think, it's a very entertaining movie and nothing beyond that. Actually it is an extremely entertaining story and nothing beyond that. And it is one of the greatest examples of the genius of Hitchcock! He's the only director I know who could take a story as trivial and create such a mood of place and character, that every scene is successful in tone, mood and creative scene development. I feel like I've been put in a slight hypnotic state every time I see it. It is the bible of narrative for the action and spy genre. And I believe set the tone for the Bond films, which have never equalled it!
Cary Grant goes to Mount Rushmore--not just for the sight-seeing!! October 7, 2008
Stephen Pletko (London, Ontario, Canada)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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Movie`s hero: "My wives divorced me."
Movie's heroine: "Why?"
Hero: "They said I lived too dull a life."
The above dialogue is found near the end of this classic suspense movie that is even today unparalleled in producing an optimal combination of plot, humour, action, mystery, and intrigue without resorting to clichés. It was directed by "The Master of Suspense," the great Alfred Hitchcock.
Look for Hitchcock's characteristic brief cameo appearance after the opening credits. Some say that there is a second cameo.
Briefly, our hero in this movie, mid-mannered advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), is plunged into the bizarre world of spy (James Mason), counterspy (the heroine in this movie played by Eva Marie Saint), is kidnapped, framed for murder, chased, and even crop-dusted. I should also mention that he "visits" Mount Rushmore and gets up-close to the faces of former U.S. presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln) carved on the mountain.
The debonair Cary Grant effectively carries this movie. (This was Grants fourth and final teaming with Hitchcock.) Kudos must also go to the terrific supporting cast of Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau (who plays the spy's main henchman), Jesse Royce Landis (who plays Thornhill's mother where in real-life Landis was only eight years older than Grant) and Leo G. Carroll (who plays the head of the C.I.A.).
Another key ingredient of this movie is its background music. This fantastic orchestral score was composed by Bernard Herrmann. It effectively adds to each scene.
Where does the movie's title come from? There are actually many theories for its origin. Personally, I think it comes from the fact that as the movie proceeds, Thornhill travels north on Northwest Airlines. (One of the original titles for this movie was "The Man in Lincoln's Nose.")
Finally, the DVD (the one released in 2004) is perfect in picture and sound quality. It has eight interesting extras.
In conclusion, this is one of those movie gems that, in my opinion, deserves to be called a "classic." Roger Thornhill's ex-wives were wrong. He definitely does not have a dull life!!
Recommendation: watch this movie on as large of a screen as possible.
(1959; 2 hr, 15 min; wide screen; 46 scenes; colour)
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 Good thriller September 15, 2008
Cosmoetica (New York, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The addition of pretense can be a killer in a film. It is precisely the lack of such a quality that makes Alfred Hitchcock's two and a quarter hour long 1959 color thriller North By Northwest a better and more enjoyable film than his preceding film, Vertigo, even if the film comes nowhere near the excellence of his following film, Psycho. Whereas the two films that end in -o attempt to impose a deeper psychology into their screenplays, North By Northwest is a popcorn eaters gala pre-James Bondian Cold War thriller. It's no wonder the film was a popular smash while Vertigo was a financial flop.
On a strictly logical level, little of the film makes much sense, but it's Hitchcock, after all. As example, what is contained on the microfilm that is the film's MacGuffin- inside the statuette, is meaningless and beside the point- which is action and thrills. That there is no logical reason for Cary Grant's character, Roger Thornhill- another Hitchcockian wrongly accused man, a Madison Avenue advertising executive, to be mistaken for the non-existent spy George Kaplan, is another problem. Yet, even though it is done in a rather unconvincing fashion- Thornhill summons a hotel attendant who is paging Kaplan, and the chase is on- few people will debate cause and effect in a film like this. The dopey bad guys see this brief moment and assume everything- a perfect example of the dumbest possible action propelling the plot, which is usually an artistic killer. However, on the plus side, this is one of Cary Grant's best and Cary Grantiest roles. He is charming, delightful, suave, and the fact that he never seems to get a hair out of place in assorted acts of derring-do, even when chased and dusted by that crop duster, in one of the film's most famed scenes, is not a problem, unless one just cannot let the formula silliness wash over them.
On the negative side is the performance of Eva Marie Saint, as Eve Kendall- the lover/counterspy of James Mason's Soviet mole character, Phillip Vandamm. Saint is stiff and wooden, and even less convincing as a romantic lead than many of the other icy blonds that inhabit the Hitchcock universe. Yes, she's beautiful; second perhaps only to Grace Kelly in the Hitchcockian blond goddess pantheon, but she has absolutely no chemistry with Grant.... Technically, the film holds up much better than many of Hitchcock's other efforts, for the process screens are not always readily detectable, as they are in other of his films- save for the scene where Thornhill does not drive his car off a cliff that the bad guys want him to, and the sets constructed for some of the big chase scenes- especially the Mount Rushmore set, are fabulous, even by modern standards. While the cinematography by Robert Burks is solid, there are no eyepopping moments, and the score by Bernard Herrmann is one of his least memorable, especially considering what was just around the corner in Psycho.
North By Northwest, whose title is both manifest- given the film's final setting, and obscure and of unknown provenance- although oddly linked to a supposed quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, is not a great film, but it is a terrific movie, and because it is such utter and unrepentant fluff it holds up much better than many other 1950s vintage films, including many of Hitchcock's own overrated `masterpieces', such as Rear Window and Vertigo. Yes, if you are the type who must go over everything with even a coarse toothcomb, the film simply will not work, but if you trust that the fun will leave your mind as unmussed as Cary Grant's coiffure, then watch it. After all, the perfect hair of Cary Grant is never something to be diminished.
Is this Roger Thornhill or Bond, James Bond? September 10, 2008
Geri (Henderson, Nevada)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film was the fourth and last "spy" film that he did with Cary Grant. The others are Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), and To Catch a Thief (1955).
I realize that Hitchcock was a close friend of Albert Broccoli (James Bond films)and Cary Grant was the original pick by Albert Broccoli to play James Bond, but the character in this film, Roger Thornhill, reminded so much of James Bond, that I had a hard time trying to convince myself that this isn't a "Bond" film. I realize that Dr. No (the first Bond film) came out in 1962. BUT, was Bond's film character patterned on this wonderful movie? The resemblance is so great, Thornhill even had a martini!
Briefly, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a U.S. undercover agent, abducted, framed for murder, nobody believes his story so he's on the run. He meets a counter spy (Eva Marie Saint) and has one of the longest on-screen kisses with her.
This movie has so many great scenes. Among them are the stabbing at the United Nations (where Thornhill was framed for murder), A crop dusting plane that attacked our running hero (which incidently was the influence for the helicopter scene in From Russia With Love---again, Bond) and the great chase around the presidents' faces at Mt. Rushmore.
This film also starred James Mason and Martin Landau.
This is one cinema masterpiece! Watch and enjoy, especially if you like James Bond films, but remember it's not...
 Slow start, but a great movie... August 23, 2008
Mystery
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I had a hard time understanding the whole plot of this story. Apparently, Cary Grant's character is mistaken for a spy and kidnapped by James Mason's character and his gang. But this "spy" doesn't even exist, and it's up to Grant to survive and get these guys. He gets chased by a crop duster, gets mistaken for a murderer when the man beside him at the United Nations gets stabbed, and goes across Mt. Rushmore with Eva Marie Saint's character, who plays a spy and his eventual ladylove. This is full of suspense, despite its slow start. All actors play their parts well, and look for the usual Hitchcock cameo somewhere in the movie.
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