Do North?

After Hitchcock experiences good, bad, and ugly, I decided to give the famous director one more try with North By Northwest. This movie has possibly the simplest premise of any of his films -- an advertising executive is mistaken for a secret agent by a criminal mastermind, and adventure ensues.

Cary Grant plays the lead, and is fairly realistic and thoroughly likable in the role. You can't help but feel that Sean Connery was drawing a lot of inspiration for his "real" secret agent James Bond when he made Dr. No just a few years later. Grant is cool under pressure, and casually tosses off a clever phrase with effortless charm.

The other performers are less effective. Eva Marie Saint is a bit artificial in her delivery, James Mason is every bit of what impressionists rib him for, and Martin Landau is too new to acting at the time (and in too small a role) to command much presence on the screen. No one is bad, but they don't measure up to Grant.

The movie starts out strong, leaping into the plot uncharacteristically fast for an Alfred Hitchcock film. Within five minutes, our hero is being picked up by the villain's goons, and the case of mistaken identity has begun. The first act is tight and compelling, with great scenes, interesting surprises, and plenty of other material good enough to make you overlook a badly dated car chase sequence.

But then things slip off the rails a little bit. Act two begins with a long and awkward scene in which intelligence agents we've not seen before sit in a room and explain what's really happening. It's the worst kind of exposition, where characters speak with one another about information they all already know... you know, just in case someone out there might be watching and confused about everything. The film would have been much better served, in my view, to scrap this scene and just delay the explanations until the start of the final act, when the lead character himself discovers what is happening to him.

The introduction of the leading lady picks things back up for a time, where more revelations and a good chemistry between the actors manage to once again engage. But right around the one hour mark, the film began a slow and inexorable roll downhill for me. The iconic "biplane chase" sequence is oddly cut and very slowly paced for an action sequence. And it's only the first in a procession of scenes much in need of having empty spaces removed from them for better pacing.

The movie never quite gets boring, but it does start to feel long -- every minute of its two hour and fifteen minute running time. It doesn't end badly, but I feel it never really measures up to the promise of the compelling opening act.

Overall, I'd place this movie in the middle of the Hitchcock scale, rating it a C+. It doesn't hold up as well today, in my view, as Psycho or Rear Window, but may still be worth your time if you're interested in classic films.