By Bruce Dancis
Scripps Howard News

“That’s funny.” (Man at prairie crossing)
“What?” (Roger Thornhill, played by Cary Grant)
“That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.” (Man)

A few seconds later, Madison Avenue adman Roger Thornhill will be dodging the most evil crop duster in movie history. This legendary sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” has never looked as good on home video as it does in the new 50th anniversary Blu-ray edition, released this week (Warner Home Video, $34.99, not rated).

The first of Hitchcock’s films to appear in the Blu-ray high-definition format, “North by Northwest” is an innocent-man-on-the-run-trying-to-find-the-real-villain suspense film in the Hitchcock tradition of “The 39 Steps” and “Saboteur.” Here, the perilous journey of the falsely accused man hunted both by spies who have mistakenly identified him as a CIA-type operative named George Kaplan and by police who believe he murdered a United Nations official is played out in an America of crowded cities, barren flatlands and national landmarks.

“North by Northwest,” released to popular and critical acclaim in 1959 following the mixed response Hitchcock received for his psychologically complex “Vertigo,” finds the master director at his most assured. Making his first movie for MGM, Hitchcock had been contractually guaranteed complete control of the production and the final cut. He put together a superb cast, with the handsome and debonair Grant the ideal actor to portray Thornhill, a man who finds his comfortable world unraveling in a series of preposterous events. Eva Marie Saint joins the notable ranks of Hitchcock’s blonde heroines as the love interest/double agent whose life Thornhill inadvertently endangers, while James Mason embodies the best of Hitchcock’s sophisticated, multi-dimensional villains as Phillip Vandamm.

The contributions of all these cast and crew members, as well as the work of production designer Robert Boyle and cinematographer Robert Burks, are explored in the Blu-ray disc’s special features. New to this edition are two documentaries made in 2009 — “The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style” and “North by Northwest: One for the Ages” — which include the insights of admiring film directors such as Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, William Friedkin and Guillermo del Toro, interspersed with scenes from “North by Northwest” and other Hitchcock films. Also new to the Blu-ray edition is a 44-page book featuring photos from the film, facts about the production and short biographies of Hitchcock and his stars.

Reprised from past DVD editions are a making-of documentary hosted by Saint and featuring interviews with Patricia Hitchcock (the director’s daughter), Boyle and cast member Martin Landau, who plays Vandamm’s loyal henchman, Leonard; an excellent 87-minute documentary from Turner Classic Movies on Grant’s life and career; a photo gallery and more.

In this Blu-ray edition, the film has been restored and remastered from the original VistaVision production, and the colors just pop off the screen. This is even the case with the crop-duster scene, set in a barren stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, with the nowhere of the southern San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, Calif., subbing for the nowhere of rural Indiana. Thornhill’s impeccably tailored gray-patterned suit, silver-gray tie and white shirt, along with Grant’s tanned face and perfect hair, contrasts beautifully with the foreboding dry brown dirt of the fields surrounding the highway. Cinematically, Hitchcock shows viewers that this is a man who is decidedly out of his element. After successfully hiding from the police in the confined spaces of a train traveling from New York to Chicago, he finds himself a target in the open outdoors with nowhere to hide.

Interestingly, for most of the crop-dusting scene Hitchcock strips his movie of its dialogue and music. Outside of the few words Thornhill exchanges with a stranger waiting for a bus on the Indiana road, Hitchcock relies on the sounds emerging from passing cars, buses, trucks and a single-engine plane. The silence adds to Thornhill’s isolation in this desolate space. Herrmann’s music re-emerges only at the end of the scene, when the plane accidentally crashes into a tanker truck and they both explode.

The story is often told, in the bonus features included here and in many of the books and articles written about Hitchcock and “North by Northwest,” how during the filming Grant complained that he couldn’t make any sense out of the story Hitchcock was shooting. For Hitchcock, that was precisely the point — Grant’s Roger Thornhill is placed in a situation totally out of his own control, on the run from those who view him as a spy, a murderer or both, trying to survive the machinations of an enemy he cannot fathom and the motives of a woman he cannot trust. Of course Thornhill couldn’t understand what was happening to him — that’s what “North by Northwest” was all about.

Fortunately, for him — and us — Grant trusted his director’s instincts and skill. The result was an ageless delight, a suspense film that still inspires admiration and love, and which, 50 years after its initial release, looks as good as new.

‘North by Northwest’
4 stars (out of 5)
Scripps Howard News Service