I have begun, in my old age, to appreciate Cary Grant. I can remember when I was younger, watching his films, Bringing Up Baby comes to mind as a prime example, and failing to grasp what he was up to. Katharine Hepburn was comparatively easy to read, spoiled and headstrong and not comprehending that not everyone is there to make her happy, but her romantic foil… well, Cary Grant, or the archetypal Cary Grant character, I should say, is not someone for whom there is an obvious modern parallel, and being unable to relate him to anything familiar in the already limited experiences of childhood, I could not understand either his character or the movie. He may very well represent an extinct archetype, or perhaps his own private archetype.

But these days, I find the man compelling. He is handsome, certainly, but in a restrained, respectable manner. He is, most often, a man of the Establishment, likely as not fairly well-off, in a position of authority, and on the side of right. (Although, in Charade with Audrey Hepburn he toys cleverly with this image.) But he is not always likeable; in Notorious, another film by Hitchcock, you almost have to hate him for how he invades the life of Ingrid Bergman, but even there he has his redemption.

However, in North by Northwest, he is quite adorable. As Roger Thornhill, he is well turned out, cool as cats, always able to fall back on wit and irony when his ego is bruised or he’s threatened with imminent death. And it isn’t that he doesn’t take the obstacles (and there are many obstacles in this film, falling one after another) seriously, it’s as if he accepts them at face value and says, well, that is that, so I may as well try and make the best of it and if I come up with the best solution, I may yet live. And it would be hard to argue that he isn’t enjoying the challenge.

Of course, one of the main enjoyments of the trip is Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint. And she is wonderful, matching him for disappointments, deception, and irony. And her seduction of him on the train is a perfectly crafted fusion of necessity and simplicity that looks both effortless and spontaneous. There is no question that he would fall in love with her…

Frankly, the cast is wonderful. The third main cast member, James Mason as the villain, is perfectly calculating and cruel. And between themselves, they pass the movie about, sharing the burden, and with such a cast, it could have been a perfect movie. The trouble is the plot. It’s a bit silly. And when I say a bit, I mean, in fact, a great deal. It is about an advertising executive (Grant) who is mistaken for a government agent by Mason’s gang, who try and fail to kill him- however Grant lands in jail, goes to trial, leads the detectives around, while Mason’s people manage to convince everyone he’s crazy, and then, while looking for signs of the man he’s been mistaken for, he reinforces the idea that he’s the government agent, where upon he is framed for a murder, and then goes on the run, meets Eve on the train…. and it just continues to get increasingly preposterous from there. I’ve been trying to decide since I saw the movie if the plot would have worked more for me if they’d played it straighter, if there had been less jokes. But then, the jokes were sort of the best part.

I don’t have an answer, I guess, but it seems like this movie was a sort of a stunt and a spoof of the sort of movie Hitchcock is famous for. And what troubles me the most is the title. It sounds well enough, and I suppose you can make a fair case that from Chicago to North Dakota you are in fact going North, but if they hadn’t traveled there on Northwest Airlines, I’d feel a lot better about it.