North By Northwest

North By Northwest is a typical American thriller made in 1959 which has been directed by the brilliant mind of Albert Hitchcock, written by Ernest Lehman and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

The story is of an 'innocent' New York executive who is mistaken for a government agent called George Kaplan. This works out very badly for Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) who then becomes kidnapped by Philip Vandamm's (James Mason) henchman and brought back to his house for questioning. Roger then escapes, drunk in a car, goes to the police and tries to pursue this 'George Kaplan' which then ends up with him being chased by foreign spies, fleeing for his life.
After fleeing for days, he stows away on a train to find this 'George Kaplan' and runs into the beautiful Eva Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) which then makes them emotionally connect and maybe fall in love...
The plot inevitably continues and unravels the secret that Eva Kendall has been hiding all of this time. Using his cunning wit and intelligence he is able to recover the object that the villains want and foils the plans of Philip Vandamm. And as far as we know, the movie ends with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint travel back together on the train.

Albert Hitchcock used many very successful techniques while he was making this film, it is a magnificent plot and storyline with an 'almost' cliffhanger ending. One of the techniques that Albert Hitchcock used in the film is Red Herring. This is a very superb technique which deliberately fools the audience to think a certain way about a particular character. An example of this is Eva Kendall. Our initial thought of her is that she is evil because she works with Philip Vandamm, but we find out she is an agent which changes our opinion about her and justifies it. One thing that Albert Hitchcock has created himself is the MacGuffin. He explains a MacGuffin as "a plot element that catches the viewers attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".