Roger Thornhill, a New York advertising executive, is mistaken for a government agent and chased across America — by spies, by police, and by a crop-dusting plane.
In North by Northwest (1959), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising man who is kidnapped by foreign agents who think he is a man named George Kaplan. Thornhill escapes, but he is then framed for murder at the United Nations, and he flees across the country, pursued by both the spies and the police. Along the way he meets Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint, whose loyalties are not as clear as they seem.
The film is a series of famous set pieces: an auction, a train journey, a chase through the cornfields of the Midwest, and a climax on the faces of Mount Rushmore. Grant is at his best as the ordinary man in extraordinary trouble, using wit and charm to survive situations that grow more dangerous by the minute. He makes Thornhill’s disbelief, and then his determination, completely believable.
North by Northwest is one of Hitchcock’s most entertaining films, and Grant’s Thornhill is the perfect hero for it: sophisticated, funny, and always one step ahead — just barely.