In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.

I wrote last week about Family Plot saying that Hitchcock's films feel like they simultaneously invent and master a given genre, and I had North by Northwest (which I watched shortly after watching Family Plot) in mind. What is there not to love about this film? So many of its scenes have been spoofed hundreds of times, and yet it carries with it none of the weight of inauguration: the set pieces are simple and elegant, Grant is at his Cary Grant-iest, and even though you are surprised by none of the twists and turns you are delighted and comforted by them.

It's hard to write much about North by Northwest under delusions of novelty. I think this film — like much of Hitchcock's work, excepting Rear Window — is less interested in truth than it is in enchantment, and it's funny to look retrospectively at considerations of the film as a "paranoid thriller" (which it certainly is!). Compare this with, say, The Parallax View — Grant is rankled but never ruffled, the movie ends with a hug and a tryst in a sleeping car, and the world keeps spinning away with a mystery solved and sinner saved. Hitchcock at his best cannot summon the heights of cynicism and world-weariness that dominated seventies cinema: and as good as the acme of that decade is, North by Northwest ages so well because it knows that, at the end of the day, it's meant to be a romp.

★★★★