North by Northwest [Blu-ray]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby TrueHD
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV, Color
• Subtitle: French, Danish, Spanish, German, Italian, English
• Features:
  • Commentary by Screenwriter Ernest Lehman
  • New 2009 Documentary Reveals The Master's Touch: Hitcock's Signature Style
  • Acclaimed Feature Length Career Profile Cary Grant: A Class Apart
  • Explore in Depth the Movie's Innovations and Influences in the New North by Northwest: One for the Ages
  • Vintage 2000 Documentary Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest
  • Music-Only Audio Track
  • Stills Gallery
  • Theatrical Trailers
  • TV Spot

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Color Art Direction - 1959 (Merrill Pye, Robert F. Boyle, Frank R. McKelvey, Henry W. Grace, William Horning)
•     Nominated Best Editing - 1959 (George Tomasini)
•     Nominated Best Original Screenplay - 1959 (Ernest Lehman)

• American Film Institute

•     Won 100 Greatest American Movies - 1998

• Directors Guild of America

•     Nominated Best Director - 1959 (Alfred Hitchcock)

• Edgar Allan Poe Awards

•     Won Best Screenplay - 1959 (Ernest Lehman)

• Library of Congress

•     Won U.S. National Film Registry - 1994

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1959

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Cary Grant - Roger O. Thornhill
       Eva Marie Saint - Eve Kendall
       James Mason - Phillip Vandamm
       Jesse Royce Landis - Clara Thornhill
       Leo G. Carroll - The Professor

• Director:

  Alfred Hitchcock

• Producer:

  Alfred Hitchcock

• Screenwriter:

  Ernest Lehman

• Cinematographer:

  Robert Burks

• Composer (Music Score):

  Bernard Herrmann

• Editor:

  George Tomasini

• Production Designer:

  Robert F. Boyle

• Art Director:

  William Horning, Merrill Pye

• Associate Producer:

  Herbert Coleman

REVIEW:

• Equal parts sly identity crisis, suspenseful cross-continental chase, and cool romance, North by Northwest is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most enjoyable films. Done with the irreverent brand of humor that the director made his trademark, the film balances somewhere between suspense thriller and urbane comedy, its considerable wit both complementing and fueling its intrigue. As memorable for the sexy, sophisticated banter between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint as for the famous crop-dusting sequence or the climactic chase atop Mount Rushmore, North by Northwest is one of those films that inspires any number of readings. Chock-full of phallic references, conspiracy paranoia, Freudian subtext (made particularly apparent in Thornhill's relationship with his mother, who in reality was played by an actress born the same year as Grant), and featuring a token sinister homosexual, watching the movie is like watching an ode to the forces at work against the single, successful white man in Cold War America. As played by the superb Grant, he's a glib, increasingly befuddled man who perfectly represents the film's breezy yet cautionary tone, a playboy and a mama's boy in one charming yet vaguely troubled package. His true identity, Hitchcock seems to be saying, is as open to question as the one he is forced to assume. For her part, Saint put her stamp on the Icy Sex Goddess role as Eve, allowing just the right measure of vulnerability to melt through the character's freeze-dried exterior. She provided an able foil for Grant, easily matching his personal brand of suave charm with her own. Their pairing was one of the most delightful in Hitchcock's films, elegant yet with a delicate tinge of frenzy. Elegant frenzy could describe the film as a whole: stylish and taut, North by Northwest is Hitchcock at his gleeful best. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

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