What do you rate North by Northwest?

I always saw it as "Hitchcock's most epic film."

He made it at his most famous and powerful, so money was budgeted to hire Cary Grant as the hero(not Bob Cummings level as in Saboteur), James Mason as his villain(not Otto Kruger level as in Saboteur) and Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint(not Priscilla Lane level as in Saboteur.) (You might get that I see North by Northwest as an informal remake OF Saboteur.

But the money was also there for three big set pieces: the drunken drive at the beginning; the crop duster sequence in the middle, and the literally monumental cliffhanger climax on Mount Rushmore at the end(my personal favorite set piece in all of Hitchcock.)

With a witty and nicely structured script, between these big action set-pieces are all sorts of inventive sequences: the initial kidnapping ("regular guy" Roger Thornhill is mistaken for Kaplan and from that SECOND, his life is in continual danger); the Glen Cove chit-chat("Games? Must we?") the arrest for drunken driving -- and the big one: the UN murder(with the spectacular overhead shot as Thornhill runs away.)

AND the very sexy for its time banter between Grant and Saint on the train ("I have to hold back from telling a woman that I'd like to make love to her" "Why?" "She might take offense" "Then again...she might not.")

AND the screwball auction scene -- in which Grant bids insanely to save his life("1500 -- for THAT chromo?")

AND his great line to the Professor at the airport: "I've got a job, a secretary, two ex-wives and several bartenders depending on me."

As its screenwriter Ernest Lehman noted, NXNW was a solid hit on release, but only grew and grew and GREW as an influential screen classic as the years rolled on. It is "ground zero for the action movie"(Entertainment Weekly) and begat James Bond, Indy Jones, Die Hard, and The Matrix(among others.)

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