Roger Thornhill is an advertising executive’s ideal. He’s successful, handsome, sharp as a tack and always dressed to the nines. He’s well known and respected by his peers.
So, when two thuggish individuals pull a gun on him in a hotel lobby and call him by the name of Kaplan, Roger immediately thinks it must be a joke. Maybe the boys at the club have set up this hoodlum bit for a laugh.
But after a forced cab ride to a local estate, Roger isn’t quite sure what’s going on. It certainly isn’t amusing him.
Then he’s ushered into the library of another man, a Mr. Townsend, who also calls him by the name of George Kaplan. And this Townsend fellow seems to think he’s nothing less than a spy, a government agent. And he wants to bribe him to cooperate.
Now, Roger is ready to laugh, except for the fact that his kidnappers are all so deadly serious and holding guns. He earnestly tries to explain that’s it’s a simple case of mistaken identity, but his captors won’t hear a word of it. Must we continue these games, Mr. Kaplan, Townsend dryly murmurs. Then he orders his thugs to quietly take care of the matter.
Which means what, exactly? What is this “matter,” Roger wonders, and how do they intend to “take care” of it? One of the men pulls out a bottle of bourbon and intimates that he intends to see Roger drink the whole thing. Roger’s always up for a cocktail, but this is ridiculous.
The suave and always well-pressed advertising exec is now convinced that his evening isn’t going to end up at the theater as he was planning.
And he’s absolutely right.
In fact, Roger Thornhill is about to embark on the mystery-filled rollercoaster ride of his life.
Roger survives his initial contact with Townsend (whose real name is Vandamm), but things continue to get worse for him. While running from the baddies and police, he then meets a young woman named Eve who goes out of her way to help him. And Roger becomes smitten.
Even after Roger discovers that Eve lied to him, he puts his life on the line to save her.
Someone says, “God bless you.
Roger has been married and divorced twice. He’s definitely a lady’s man. We see him ask his secretary to send candy to one of his current girlfriends. We see his appeal to the opposite sex on several occasions.
He and Eve meet on a train and seductively tease one another with (1950s’ style) flirtatious sexual quips and innuendo over dinner. In fact, nearly all of their winking dialogue could be construed as a proposition.
That flirting leads to the pair kissing seductively back in Eve’s drawing room. We never see them go any further, but it’s implied that they may have. We see them kiss again later.
Roger is shown shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist in once scene. We also see him in his boxers. Roger climbs out his window and into a strange woman’s room, who sits up in a nightgown.
Someone is described as Vandamm’s mistress.
Roger finds himself in perilous situations, most featuring armed gunmen, throughout the film. He’s forced to drive a car down a steep, narrow, mountain road while staggeringly drunk; barely missing other cars and a man on a bike. A car crashes into the back of another car. A man is hit in the back by a thrown knife.
Roger gets into a few fist fights. He’s shot at by a crop-dusting plane and has to dive for safety in a ditch. That plane hits a fuel truck and explodes. Someone is shot, but the bullets are blanks. A man intends to throw someone from a plane but is thwarted. One character is knocked down by a braking truck.
Someone hangs vicariously from the face of Mount Rushmore while a baddie steps on his fingers. Two people fall to their deaths from a great height.
Despite the story’s peril and some intense moments of violence, all of it is bloodless.
Someone exclaims, “That’s the d–nedest thing.”
Vandamm and his men smoke cigarettes. We see others occasionally smoking in public, too. This is also an era when many adults have some sort of cocktail with dinner. Roger and Eve drink martinis and the like.
As mentioned above, Roger is forced to drink to excess at one point. We don’t see him drinking, but afterward he is barely able to stand and drives in that condition (after the thugs put him behind the wheel with the intent of causing an accident that kills him).
Roger is initially somewhat manipulative. He tells his secretary, “In the world of advertising there’s no such thing as a lie, there’s only expedient exaggeration.” And he’s called upon to use those skills while on the run. To escape his dire circumstances, he tells lies and even steals a truck.
[Spoiler Warning] In time, we learn that there are indeed government agents in the midst of Roger’s predicament. The agents lie and manipulate others repeatedly. When they find out that Roger has been accidentally pulled into their case, one asks, “How long do you think he’ll stay alive?” “That’s his problem,” another retorts.
Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest is a 1959 thriller that had a lasting impact on the film industry after its release. It is considered by many to be one of the lauded director’s best and most entertaining films.
This taut mistaken-identity tale is rife with suspense, humor and romance. Its handsome and charming lead, Cary Grant, plays one of his most iconic roles here—though he was pretty convinced at the time that the film would be a flop.
In fact, it’s been reported that Grant found the Roger Thornhill role to be a tad baffling. He went to Hitchcock and declared, “We’ve already done a third of the picture, and I still can’t make head nor tails of it.” Hitchcock, however, was certain that the actor’s confusion would only help the film since Thornhill himself had no idea what was going on either.
It turned out that Hitch was right. Many accolades and awards (including three Academy Award nominations) were a testament to that fact.
For families wondering if there’s a long list of problems in this classic pic, however, I can set your minds at relative ease. There are thugs with guns as well as lots of big, potentially deadly situations here—from a guy getting a knife in the back at the United Nations to the hero dangling from the rocky face of Mount Rushmore. But the messy side of things is kept outside the camera’s view, as was often the case with Hitchcock’s directorial approach.
Perhaps the biggest issue that might need a little discussion with younger viewers is the Roger Thornhill character himself. He’s a suave guy who sips cocktails in any relaxed moment and readily enters into flirtatious verbal foreplay with a pretty stranger on a train. It’s the sort of stuff that might easily slip by kids, but they can’t miss the lip-locking that follows after.
That said, any and all of those potentially problematic bits pale in comparison to today’s typical thriller fare. This beloved film can easily be called a rousing, mentally engaging and generally wholesome classic.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
