I kicked off my film-viewing for the year with an Alfred Hitchcock double bill, watching two of my favourites, North By Northwest and Rear Window. You really can’t beat Alfred Hitchcock for a great thriller. These two movies are rather different in plot and tone, but both equally brilliant. Cary Grant and James Stewart are two great leading actors, even here when they are a bit older. These really are two excellent movies.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hitchcock film yet that I haven’t liked, and I think that North By Northwest is an excellent example of all the great things that Hitchcock does in his movies. For example it has the brilliant Saul Bass titles and Bernard Hermann score, and Cary Grant (who is second to only James Stewart as my favourite Hitchcock star), which all go towards making it a classic Hitchcock film. Hitchcock is of course known as the master of suspense, and I think that’s pretty obvious here. The whole film is basically a MacGuffin, the result of mistaken identity, which is something Hitchcock does best, and it manages to be such a suspenseful thriller as a result. There are so many moments which illustrate this, but the crop duster scene is the most notable example. Cary Grant standing in the field, just waiting, and then the plane coming at him, is just perfect. Speaking of Cary Grant, he’s great here, but then I think he’s pretty much always great, but I’d forgotten how old he looks here. I find it funny that Hitchcock apparently cast Grant over Stewart because he thought Stewart looked too old in Vertigo, especially as Grant is the older of the two. Alfred Hitchcock really is one of my favourite directors, and North By Northwest is very close to being my favourite of his films.