North by Northwest - 4K Blu-ray Review

Movie
Looking back over my review titles that I’ve cranked out over the last 13 years (in a few months) It looks like I have NEVER put out one for one of Hitchcock’s most iconic films. I mean, I’ve done more than my fair share of his other Blu-rays and even a few 4K discs of his, but for some reason it looks like North by Northwest has never come across my desk in a professional manner. To make matters more interesting, I haven’t seen it for almost a decade (I think 2015 or 2016 was my last viewing gong by my memory) so re-watching for this review allowed me to watch it almost fresh in a sort of ways, and boy howdy, did Warner Brothers deliver a doozy on this one.

During the 50s and 60s Alfred Hitchcock was probably one of the most celebrated, and most popular directors of the time period, cranking out hit after hit after hit, ranging from pure horror like The Birds and Psycho, to espionage thrillers like North by Northwest. And out of all of those films, no matter how much people remember Psycho in horror circles, or how arguable “different” it is, North by Northwest has to be his true masterpiece of that era. It was a brilliantly done espionage thriller, paving the way for movies like the 007 series, Jason Bourne, and countless other super agent type of films. And even though those other films are more etched in the pop culture consciousness of most viewers, North by Northwest probably stands as the single greatest film the prolific director has ever done.

In true Hitchcock fashion, our film starts out by introducing us to our protagonist, an every day man named Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) who runs an advertising firm on Madison Avenue. Thornhill soon gets mistaken for his doppleganger, one Mr. Kaplan (who ends up being a red herring and doesn’t actually exist), and is subsequently kidnapped by a couple of thugs to and brought before one Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) and questioned. Naturally Vandamm doesn’t believe Thornhill’s protestations about not being Mr. Kaplan, and orders the poor guy to be executed. As you can guess by the trailer, Vandamm’s thugs end up messing things up, leaving Thornhill only one option. Go by train to Chicago and find the REAL Mr. Kaplan and proven his innocence.

Along the way he meets a sultry “bond girl” like seductress named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) who offers to put Thornhill up in her cabin for the night to keep him away from the thugs following him (of course she does). Now Thornhill has to play cat and mouse with a group of men who aren’t exactly what they seem, and nobody is to be trusted. Even if you’ve seen this sort of thing a million times, Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock bring the thrills and double crosses a mile a minute, so by the end of the 2+ hour runtime even the audience is having to second guess everything they knew going in.

The basis of the film revolves around the old “mistaken identity” trope, but does it so expertly that you almost can’t see the traditional tropes being played out. Even though Hitchcock sort of pioneered the modern day super spy thriller, those tropes were around well before his invention of North by Northwest and the audience at least has seen the general IDEA before (in that time period. Today we’ve seen the mistaken identity double cross and twist a million times). Even then, it never gets old, and leaves the audience on the edge of their seat the entire time. Honestly, this is about as perfect as a spy thriller as you can get, and I will reiterate, this is probably the apex of Hitchcock’s illustrious career.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. I really have to pick my jaw up off the floor after this one, as Warner Brothers has outdone themselves with brand new restoration specifically for this release that handily outclasses every single version of the film I’ve seen to date. This is lovingly done, with all of the nicks, cracks, hair and debris completely taken care of, and If any digital tinkering was done to grain level, I really couldn’t tell. Taking care of the 1.78:1 framed Blu-ray we go back to the original 1.85:1 framing for this release, and comparing directly against the old Blu-ray, it seems that they’ve ever so slightly altered the framing on the sides as well in a few scenes. Color timing is vastly improved, as everything lost that sort of burnished look of the old Blu-ray, and gives a more natural grading to the whole thing. We don’t get any Dolby Vision, but the HDR application on the disc really makes everything pop. The film’s color grading doesn’t lend itself towards really deeply saturated colors, but mixes sime light grays, pastel reds and sky blues to create a very historic and beautiful look that can’t be replicated today. Fine details are ridiculously absurd, showcasing every fiber on a tweed jacked, the makeup lines around Eva’s face, and even lines where wigs were much more noticeable than before. Black levels look great, and the only real complaint I have is that in a couple of scenes (usually the day for night shots) you get some mild grain spikes. But overall, this is an INCREDIBLE looking disc.








Audio:

As is the case for Warner’s other 4K catalog re-issues this last week, North by Northwest gets a brand new Dolby Atmos track as well as the original theatrical Mono mix in DTS-HD MA lossless. I do enjoy the old theatrical mix for it’s purity to the 1950s, and a HUGE boon to home theater enthusiasts, as pretty much every home video release (including the Blu-ray) forwent the original Mono mix for the standard 5.1 track that has been around for like 2 decades. Luckily for us it sounds superb, but even I (who leans toward a purist sort of view) was really won over by the Dolby Atmos track. It doesn’t try to really reinvent the wheel and add in a ton of ambient noise that wasn’t there, but still keeps it rather front heavy with a great 3.1 presentation for the most part. That being said, Warner has done a good job at recreating the subtle ambient sounds as Thornhill make’s his way to Chicago and to his doom. The train tracks rattle in the background, and the Bernard Hermann’s original score sounds scrumptious as it engulfs the listening position. And don’t forget, we do get some overhead activity now and again, with that infamous plane in the field flyover really taking full advantage of the heights.







Extras:

• Audio Commentary with screenwriter Ernest Lehman
• NEW! North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit
• Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest
• The Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style
• North by Northwest: One for the Ages
• A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock















North by Northwest is not only Hitchcock’s best film in my opinion, but also the first film I recommend to them if they’re not looking for more of his horror/thriller fare. The Warner Brothers disc looks and sounds incredible, and even has a fairly health array of extras that use MOST of the extras from the 50th anniversary digibook (though not all, so you might want to keep your digibook edition around) So yeah, I’m not even going to beat around the bush here, this is a must own disc that every film fan owes it to themselves to check out.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Martin Landau
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Ernest Lehman, Gerald Devries
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English DTS-HD MA 2.0, French, Spanish, German, Italian DD Mono
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish, Cantonese, Dutch, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified) (
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: NR
Runtime: 136 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: Novebmer 19th, 2024