The Wikipedia page for North by Northwest describes the film as a “thriller”. I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion. The film is about an advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken for a spy, George Kaplan, and kidnapped by a criminal, Vandamm, who thinks Kaplan is pursuing him. Thornhill then goes on a mission to find Kaplan, and along the way meets Eve Kendall, who is Vandamm’s girlfriend, and a government informant trying to take him down.  The film is full of decidedly non-thrilling scenarios: visiting an empty hotel room with your disapproving mother, walking around in public and having no one recognize you, even though you are a fugitive with your picture in all the newspapers, shaving your face with a tiny razor (even though, as above, you are a fugitive, and should probably be trying to look less like the picture in those papers…) For the most part, the moments of peril in the film are so ridiculous as to be comical. After the initial kidnapping, Vandamm tries to kill Thornhill by forcing him to drink an entire bottle of liquor and then putting him in a car and sending him rolling towards the edge of a cliff. Thornhill, of course, regains enough awareness to turn the wheel and avoid the cliff. The tense chase scene that should follow is instead a patently ridiculous sequence of a very drunk man driving (though he does cause real peril to others on the road).

In the second major action scene of the movie, Roger Thornhill is told by Eve Kendall, who he does not realize is working for Vandamm, to meet George Kaplan at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. After waiting for several minutes, a crop duster plane flies after him, makes several attempts to run him over (fly him over?) and shoots at him. The plane then crashes into an oil tanker on the road and explodes. Again, not thrilling. Why a plane, of all things? If Vandamm is such a sophisticated criminal, why are all his murder plots so nonsensical and logistically complex?

I thought North by Northwest was intended to be a comedy about three people who are all incompetent. The main criminal, Vandamm, spends the entire film trying to kill George Kaplan (or Thornhill, really) but as above, he chooses the worst possible plans. He also fails to realize that his girlfriend is the real spy until an associate literally shoots him with a gun loaded with blanks. How does a man who seems very bad at vetting his associates and eliminating his enemies manage to acquire and sell government secrets?

As for Eve Kendall, she remains with Vandamm as a government informant, to try to find out how he smuggles his information out of the country. We don’t know how long she’s been with Vandamm, but it seems like it’s been a while, and she hasn’t figured it out yet. Thornhill, of course, learns that Vandamm is using art he buys at auctions to smuggle microfilm after just a couple of days of being involved in the whole affair. Kind of embarrassing for Ms. Kendall.

And finally, Thornhill himself. Having been kidnapped because you’ve been mistaken by some criminals for a George Kaplan, why do you go to George Kaplan’s hotel room, and otherwise do things that would convince the casual observer that you are George Kaplan? Thornhill bumbles from one situation to the next, but he’s so lucky you never worry about his safety.

North by Northwest really doesn’t work for me as a thriller. But it’s an enjoyable enough movie if you think about it as a comedy about some incompetent, lucky people.