News

The Movie:

“You know, we’re not making a movie. We’re constructing an organ…the kind of organ that you see in the theatre. And we press this chord and now the audience laughs, we press that chord and they gasp, and we press these notes and they chuckle.” – Alfred Hitchcock to North By Northwest screenwriter Ernest Lehman.

You know the scenes. You know the music. You know every one-liner and suave expression from Cary Grant’s debonair face. There isn’t much that hasn’t already been said about North By Northwest. Easily Alfred Hitchcock’s most noted “mistaken identity” thriller and, arguably, his greatest achievement in movie making, it lives up to the hype and holds its own against any film of the like that comes out today. Fifty years after its release, it remains the crowning achievement of the Hitchcock thrillers, and it does so much...

Chicago – It is as difficult for me to write critically about “North by Northwest” as it would be for someone to discuss their first love. The films of Hitchcock are, without question, why I do what I do and my only concern, as they start to be released on Blu-Ray, is that they won’t live up to the bar set by the package put together for first Hitch movie on the next-gen format - “North by Northwest”.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

What more could possibly be written about “North by Northwest”? As co-star Martin Landau recently told me, it played to him like a “greatest hits” of Hitchcock’s career to that point. This is Alfred Hitchcock at the top of his game playing with themes that had been a part of his career since silent film. Released in between “Vertigo” and “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” is one of the most...

Going back to the old masters, going back to the classics is always illuminating. Someone like Alfred Hitchcock knew how to frame a film. He knew where he was putting his camera, and why it was there. As in North by Northwest he achieved one of the great visual representations of sex. Cary Grant lifts Eva Marie Saint up to bed, and then a train enters a tunnel. Not exactly subtle, but undeniably brilliant. My review after the jump.

North by Northwest is one of Hitchcock’s most pleasurable films. In his cycle of “wrong man on the run” films, which includes The 39 Steps and Foreign Correspondent, North by Northwest has one advantage over those others films: It stars Cary Grant. And Grant’s dapper persona adds a level of debonair to whatever he did. Here he stars as Roger Thornhill, who’s mistaken for secret agent George Kaplan. He...

Thrillers today are filled with fast cuts, pounding music, poor excuses for plotting and characterization, and seem designed to do nothing more than collect your cash and deliver the same old. You usually see every twist and turn coming and are rarely surprised.

In 1959, Alfred Hitchcock, at the height of his moviemaking career, unleashed the ultimate thriller in North By Northwest. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, Warner Home Video releases the Blu-ray edition on Tuesday and it’s a cause worth partaking in.

Students of Hitchcock see the familiar bits from the frosty blonde to the case of mistaken identity but here, he mixes them all together and adds in some fresh touches. Rewatching the film in its new, crisp edition, is revelatory. The opening scene establishes Roy Thornhill as a busy advertising man, a man used to dealing in artifice and then slowly strips away everything that is a...

You can bring one of legendary director Alfred Hitchcock's classic films home in a new 50th Anniversary Edition in both DVD and premiering on Blu-ray this November. North by Northwest will be released on DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray on November 3. This 50th Anniversary Edition DVD will be priced at $24.99 Srp while the new Blu-ray will be priced at $34.99 Srp. The Blu-ray will also be packaged with a 44-page book that includes photos and information on this classic. The film stars Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Cary Grant (as the ultimate man-on-the-run in his fourth Hitchcock teaming) gives a superlative performance while Eva Marie Saint (perfect Hitchcock heroine Eve Kendall) is at her sultry and sexy best in this heart-pounding thriller. Grant plays Manhattan adman Roger Thornhill, who is at once plunged into the world of spies and counterspies, abducted, framed for murder, chased, and (in the signature set-piece) crop-dusted.