North by Northwest

North by Northwest will need no introduction to most movie-goers. It's a classic, greatly admired by audiences and critics alike. The story about a befuddled ad-executive fleeing from spies and the police (the spies want him dead because he knows of their plot, the police want him captured because they think he's behind a murder) is done at a breakneck pace and deals with Hitchcock's most frequently used theme: an innocent man on the run.

Cary Grant is urbane and smooth as the hero. James Mason oozes silky menace as the principal villain (Martin Landau also plays a villain, giving his character a seriously nasty toughness). Eva Marie Saint is simply fabulous as the woman whose loyalties seems torn between good and bad.

The set pieces are rightly considered to be moments of cinematic genius. Grant's escape from a crop-duster; the fight atop Mount Rushmore; the auction house bluff; the drunken car journey; the murder at the UN building.... each scene is brilliantly devised by script writer Ernest Lehmann and just as brilliantly filmed by director Hitchcock. Everyone should see this movie... it's a masterpiece.