Recently, I attended a Flora’s Film Friday where we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. This movie is considered one of the best action/thriller movies of all time and, while watching it, I noticed a lot of classic tropes of the genre that actually originated from the film. The general structure of the movie followed a template where the main character is thrust into an unusual situation, then he learns background info, then he confronts the antagonists and loses, then there’s a love affair, then there is the climax where the protagonist wins. This template has been used by countless action movies to this day, whether it be a James Bond movie or a Marvel superhero movie. Additionally, the use of a sidekick as a love interest is cliche in modern movies. However, it Hitchcock was one of the people who first made this trope commonplace. I am one who gets bored of these cliches, so watching the movie initially was a bit boring. However, the more I thought and reflected on the film, the more I appreciate how it shaped the cinematic world for the next 50 years.