North by Northwest (not rated)
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Caution: some spoilers.

This Hitchcock film came out in 1959, like 16 years before I was born. It's one of those movies I was aware of for a long time, and always wanted to see, though I don't think I knew anything about it beyond the fact that at one point, the main character gets chased by a crop duster. So almost everything about it was new to me, when I finally saw it in 2018.

Well, it begins with an advertising executive named Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) talking to his secretary as they leave work for the day. Roger has plans to meet his mother later and go to a a show (movie, or theater, or something). (Incidentally, the actress playing his mother was only about eight years older than Grant, but I assume we're meant to think Grant's character is younger than Grant really was. Also incidentally, in the first scene Thornhill rather reminded me of Don Draper, from "Mad Men," and after watching the movie, I read online that this movie was one of the things that influenced the design of that show.) Anyway... before meeting his mother, Thornhill goes out for drinks with some guys, I don't know if they were business associates or what. But before long, he leaves their table to send a telegram or something, but before he can, he's kidnapped by some men who don't tell him what they want with him. They take him to the house of their employer, who calls himself Lester Townsend. He keeps insisting that Thornhill is actually someone named George Kaplan, while Thornhill keeps insisting that he's not. Townsend also insists that "Kaplan" knows what all this is about, so he never actually explains what he wants with him. (Incidentally, again, I tried to keep my mind open to the possibility that it might eventually turn out that Thornhill really was Kaplan, but it didn't take long after this scene for me to come to the conclusion that he must have been telling the truth about his identity, and his confusion was genuine.) When Thornhill refuses to go along with whatever it is Townsend wants, his goons hold Thornhill down and force him to drink a bottle of bourbon. They then put him in the driver's seat of a car (which later turns out to be stolen), and one of the guys actually does the driving from the passenger's seat, intending to drive over a cliff (and presumably jump out at the last second). But before that can happen, Thornhill recovers his senses enough to shove the guy out of the car, and start driving himself (but not very well, of course).

Well, he eventually gets stopped by a cop, and arrested for driving drunk. He calls his mother, who doesn't really believe his story, because she's used to him getting himself drunk. He later stands trial, but convinces the judge to have investigators go with him to Townsend's house, to prove his story. Of course any evidence that would support the story had been cleared away by then. And Townsend is gone, but his wife acts like Thornhill is an old friend of theirs, who had simply come to a party at their house and had too much to drink. She also says her husband is addressing the United Nations that day. So, nobody believes Thornhill's story. But he goes to the U.N. himself, looking for Townsend. He finds the man, but it isn't the person he had met the other night. It turns out that his house is supposed to be unoccupied at the time, and he had no idea anyone was using the place and pretending to be him. But before Thornhill can get any further at figuring things out, someone throws a knife into the real Townsend's back, killing him instantly. He collapses in Thornhill's arms, and like an idiot, Thornhill pulls the knife out, getting his prints on it, and everyone thinks he's the one who stabbed Townsend.

We then get some exposition in a scene with a group of people at a government intelligence agency, which explains who "Kaplan" actually is, but I don't want to spoil that. I was just glad to finally know what was going on in this crazy movie. But they decide not to do anything to help Thornhill out of his predicament, nor let him know the truth. So he sneaks aboard a train, to flee from the police. On the train, he soon meets a woman named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), and the two of them quickly hit it off. Despite recognizing him from the newspapers as being wanted for murder, she apparently wants to help him hide out, as well as have a one-night stand with him. And he's certainly happy to go along with both those things. Of course, the police are still looking for him, as are the people who work for the fake Townsend (whose real name is Phillip Vandamm). Beyond this, I really don't want to spoil any more details of the plot. But after getting off the train, Thornhill continues trying to find the real Kaplan, in the hopes of learning what all this is about and proving his own innocence. It's in the course of his search that he is attacked by crop duster, in what is probably the film's most iconic scene. There's also eventually a chase scene on Mount Rushmore.

Well, I am leaving out a lot of details. But I'll just say that the movie has a fair amount of humor, and mystery, and thrills, and romance, and whatnot. I expect if I'd been around when it first came out, and I had gotten to see it then, it probably would have had a greater impact on me than it did after a lifetime of watching more modern movies. But even so, I still thought it was pretty great.