NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
4K Ultra HD + Digital
Label: WBDHE
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 136 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1), DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p Ultra HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason
North By Northwest is easily one of my favorite Hitchcock thrillers, it's a wrong man in the wrong place thrillers, in it
North By Northwest is easily one of my favorite Hitchcock thrillers, it's a wrong man in the wrong place thrillers, in it
Cary Grant (Operation: Petticoat) stars as Roger Thornhill, an NYC advertising man mistaken for a spy named George Kaplan, by henchmen working for foreign spy Phillip Vandamm (George Mason, Salem's Lot). Thornhill is quite bewildered by the experience and when Vandamm tires of playing games with "Kaplan" het has his thugs stage a drunk driving accident on a winding road Thornhill manages to escape but is pulled over and charged with drunk driving, and the cops are none too easy believe his wild story of being mistaken for a spy and the attempted murder. He's released from jail on bail, in the care of his disapproving mother (Jessie Royce Landis), but his escape from Vandamm triggers a lethal game of cat and mouse that will result in Thornhill being pursued across the country by Vandamm and his thugs, one of whom is memorably played by Martin Landau (Without Warning).
Thornhill is later framed for the murder of a U.N. diplomat, making headlines across the country,, and ends up on a train where he meets Kendall (Jessie Royce Landis, To Catch a Thief) an sparks begin to fly, which is odd since she admits she knows he is the man accused of murder in the papers, but not so surprising considering later revelations. The thriller is top-notch Hitchcock who was at the peak of his creative powers in 1959, chock full of gorgeous set pieces, including the infamous crop duster scene with the exploding tanker truck, truly a dazzling series of nail-biting sequences, and also for the dizzying escape sequence atop Mount Rushmore. The script is tight as a drum, the main cast are terrific, especially Grant and Mason who are impossibly charming considering the life and death spy-thriller escapades, and of course there's plenty of the Hitchcockian dry wit and fantastic location shooting utilizing Paramount's VistaVision widescreen process. This is a wrong-man thriller that work in all ways, Grant is impeccably charming, as is Mason but in a much darker way as the foreign spy, and Landau is a good and proper malevolent force as one of our villains henchman. Then there Eva Marie Saint, a Hitchcock blonde of the highest order, is a femme fatale with a twist who from the first moment she's onscreen draws you in.
Audio/Video: North By Northwest (1959) arrives on region-free 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. in 2160p UHD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen with a lovely looking HDR10 color-grade. The source looks fan-freaking-tastic, colors are well-saturated and pop quite nicely without looking overcooked. Black levels are strong. and contrast looks nicely dialed in.
Audio comes by way of English Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1) or the original theatrical mono mux courtesy of a DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono presentation with optional English subtitles. Both tracks sound terrific, the Atmos does extend the atmospherics to a degree but it's largely the fantastic Bernard Hermann (Psycho) score that benefits the most. It's very cool to see the original mono mix returns, as I do not recall it being on the last Blu-ray release.
As with the concurrent release of Blazing Saddles I am pleased to see a new extra appear, which by and large most catalog titles from WB are not sporting these days. What we get is the 23-min North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit featuring film historians Jonathan Kuntz, Richard Edwards, and Julie Kirgo, film critic Pete Hammond, fand author Steven C. Smith and others, laying on the love for North by Northwest. Legacy extras include an Audio Commentary with Screenwriter Ernest Lehman; the 39-min Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest (2000); the 57-min The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style (2009); the 25-min North by Northwest: One for the Ages; and the 3-min A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring what looks to be a new artwork, and it's not too shabby, sometimes the revisionist artwork on the WB 4K UHDs doesn't always bring as mile to my face but I dig this one. The same artwork is replicated on the Slipcover, and inside there's a redemption code for a digital 4K copy of the film.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with Screenwriter Ernest Lehman
- NEW! North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit (23:06): Film historians Jonathan Kuntz and Julie Kirgo, film critic Pete Hammond, film scholar Richard Edwards, and author Steven C. Smith and others, discuss North by Northwest.
- Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest (2000) (39:26): retrospective is hosted by Eva Marie Saint
- The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style (2009) (57:32): Produced in 2009, the documentary features directors like William Friedkin and Martin Scorsese, along with film critics and historians, identifying key characteristics of Hitchcock’s work and what makes it so compelling. It offers a solid encapsulation of the director’s particular storytelling methods, though is probably nothing new for longtime fans of his work.
- North by Northwest: One for the Ages (25:29)
- A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock (3:14)
- Slipcover
- Digital Copy
Buy it!
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