North by Northwest (1959 Alfred Hitchcock)

It's a shame the back projection is so bad (made worse by Blu Ray) as the on-location shooting is fine. Quintessential chase movie has many highlights including surreal climax on Mount Rushmore, crop dusting sequence (not the most efficient method of trying to kill someone, but the plot should not be subjected to close examination), drunken drive, shaving with tiny razor. I wonder if after the relative lack of success of The Wrong Man and Vertigo Hitch felt he needed something more commercial and 'safe'.

I liked the scene where Leo G Carroll explains things only it's covered by aircraft noise - Buñuel would have enjoyed it. Scene ends on another great use of sound as Cary Grant learns he's endangered Eve Marie Saint's life.

Colourful score by Bernard Herrmann (check out just the little passage that plays as Grant escapes from hospital). Shot by Burks, edited by Tomasini. With a perfectly smooth James Mason, Martin Landau, Jessie Royce Landis, Josephine Hutchinson, Adam Williams.

MGM wanted him to remove a key scene towards the end (you can see why as it's his longest film) but Hitch's agents MCA had given him a complete control contract. Ernest Lehman wrote it (they had been working on Wreck of the Mary Deare but they found it was like having the climax of a film at the beginning, then ponderously having to explain it).

Hitch made so many films you can watch exactly one a week for a year without getting a repeat.

Q notices that 21 is referenced again (also in Rear Window and Spellbound):

According to Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal, authors of Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco, Mr. Hitchcock had a long-standing connection to the '21' Club. Starting with his first trip to the United States from England in the late 1930s, he was a regular patron of the restaurant throughout his life.

According to prevailing myth, Hitchcock was particularly fond of '21' Club's steak with fries, followed by an ice cream parfait. Hitchcock may have met and dined there with another regular Salvador Dali, who was often seen adjusting his waxed mustache, drumming his gold-headed cane on the floor, and celebrating commissions he accrued while lunching at '21'. Hitchcock and Dali collaborated during the making of the movie Spellbound, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. In the film's Dali-designed dream sequence, there is a cinematic reference to the '21' Club.

http://www.freewarehof.org/21club.html