North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures".

North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization who want to stop his interference in their plans to smuggle out microfilm containing government secrets.

This is one of several Hitchcock films with a music score by Bernard Herrmann and features a memorable opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass. This film is generally cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits.

Plot
Advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for "George Kaplan" and kidnapped by Valerian (Adam Williams) and Licht (Robert Ellenstein). The two take him to the Long Island estate of Lester Townsend. There he is interrogated by a man he assumes to be Townsend, but who is actually spy Phillip Vandamm (James Mason). Vandamm orders his right-hand man Leonard (Martin Landau) to get rid of Thornhill.

Thornhill is forced to drink bourbon, but manages to escape a staged driving accident. He is unable to get the authorities or even his mother (Jessie Royce Landis) to believe what happened, especially when a woman at Townsend's residence says he got drunk at her dinner party; she also remarks that Townsend is a United Nations diplomat.

Thornhill and his mother go to Kaplan's hotel room. While there, Thornhill answers the phone; it is one of Vandamm's henchmen. Narrowly avoiding recapture, he goes to the U.N. General Assembly building to see Townsend, but finds that the diplomat is a stranger. Valerian throws a knife which hits Townsend in the back. He falls dead into Thornhill's arms. Without thinking, Thornhill removes the knife, making it appear that he is the killer. He is forced to flee.

Knowing that Kaplan has a reservation at a Chicago hotel the next day, Thornhill sneaks onto the 20th Century Limited. He meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who hides Thornhill from policemen searching the train. Unbeknownst to Thornhill, Eve is working with Vandamm and Leonard, who are in another compartment. In Chicago, Eve tells Thornhill she has arranged a meeting with Kaplan.
 
Thornhill travels by bus to an isolated crossroads with flat countryside all around. Another man (Malcolm Atterbury) is dropped off, but he eventually leaves. Then a crop duster dives at him. Thornhill hides in a cornfield, but the airplane dusts it with pesticide, forcing him out. Desperate, he steps in front of a speeding tank truck, which stops barely in time. The airplane crashes into the tanker.

Learning that Kaplan had already checked out before Eve claimed to have met him, Thornhill goes to Eve's room. While he is cleaning up, she leaves. From the impression of a message written on a notepad, he learns her destination: an art auction. There, he finds Vandamm, Leonard, and Eve. Vandamm purchases a Tarascan statue and departs. Thornhill tries to follow, only to find the exits covered by Valerian and Leonard. Trapped, he places nonsensical bids so that the police will be called to escort him away.

Thornhill identifies himself as the fugitive wanted for Townsend's murder, but the officers are ordered to take him to the Professor (Leo G. Carroll), a spymaster. The Professor reveals that Kaplan does not exist. He was invented to distract Vandamm from the real government agent: Eve. As he has inadvertently put Eve's life in danger, Thornhill agrees to help maintain her cover.

In Rapid City, South Dakota, Thornhill (now pretending to be Kaplan) meets Eve and Vandamm in a crowded cafeteria. He offers to let Vandamm leave the country in exchange for Eve, but is turned down. Thornhill grabs her arm, Eve shoots him and flees. He is taken away, apparently dead. Thornhill is actually unharmed, having been shot with blanks. He learns, to his dismay, that Eve, having made herself a fugitive, will accompany Vandamm out of the country that night. The Professor has Thornhill locked up to keep from interfering further.

Thornhill escapes and sneaks inside Vandamm's mountainside residence. He overhears that the statue contains microfilm. While Eve is away Leonard fires her gun at Vandamm, demonstrating the shooting was faked. Vandamm decides to throw Eve out of the airplane once they are airborne. Thornhill manages to warn her.

On the way to the airplane Eve grabs the statue, and she and Thornhill flee across the face of the Mount Rushmore monument. Valerian lunges at them but falls to his death. Eve slips and clings desperately to the steep mountainside. Thornhill grabs her hand while precariously holding on with his other hand. Leonard appears and grinds his shoe on Thornhill's hand. A police marksman shoots Leonard. Vandamm is taken into custody.

The scene transitions from Thornhill pulling Eve to safety on Mount Rushmore to him pulling her, now his wife, onto an upper bunk on a train. The final shot shows their train speeding into a tunnel.

Reception
Time magazine called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining." A. H. Weiler of The New York Times made it a "Critic's Pick" and said it was the "year's most scenic, intriguing and merriest chase"; Weiler complimented the two leads: "Cary Grant, a veteran member of the Hitchcock acting varsity, was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam. He handles the grimaces, the surprised look, the quick smile, ... and all the derring-do with professional aplomb and grace, In casting Eva Marie Saint as his romantic vis-à-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore. Although she is seemingly a hard, designing type, she also emerges both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer."

During its two-week run at Radio City Music Hall, the film grossed $404,056, setting a record in that theater's non-holiday gross.

The film earned an estimated $5.5 million in rentals in the US and Canada during its first year of release.

The London edition of Time Out magazine, reviewing the film nearly a half-century after its initial release, commented:

Fifty years on, you could say that Hitchcock’s sleek, wry, paranoid thriller caught the zeitgeist perfectly: Cold War shadiness, secret agents of power, urbane modernism, the ant-like bustle of city life, and a hint of dread behind the sharp suits of affluence. Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill, the film’s sharply dressed ad exec who is sucked into a vortex of mistaken identity, certainly wouldn’t be out of place in Mad Men. But there’s nothing dated about this perfect storm of talent, from Hitchcock and Grant to writer Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success), co-stars James Mason and Eva Marie Saint, composer Bernard Herrmann and even designer Saul Bass, whose opening-credits sequence still manages to send a shiver down the spine.

Author and journalist Nick Clooney praised Lehman's original story and sophisticated dialogue, calling the film "certainly Alfred Hitchcock's most stylish thriller, if not his best".

North By Northwest currently holds a 100% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 61 reviews. The site's consensus calls the film "Gripping, suspenseful and visually iconic" and claims it "laid the groundwork for countless action thrillers to follow." The film ranks at number 98 in Empire magazines list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[30] The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #21 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

Awards
North by Northwest was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Film Editing (George Tomasini), Best Production Design (William A. Horning, Robert F. Boyle, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace, Frank McKelvy), and Best Original Screenplay (Ernest Lehman). All three awards went instead to Ben-Hur. The film also won, for Lehman, a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. In 1995, North by Northwest was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

In June 2008, the AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten" – the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres – after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. North by Northwest was acknowledged as the seventh-best film in the mystery genre.

American Film Institute recognition
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #40
AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #4
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
Phillip Vandamm – Nominated Villain
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – Nominated
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #55
AFI's 10 Top 10 – #7 Mystery Film