Box office
In its opening in Chicago, it grossed $46,000 in its first week and $35,000 the second week.[54] The film grossed $209,000 in its opening week at Radio City Music Hall, setting a record opening week at the theater, as well as its record non-holiday week gross, and went on to gross a record $404,056 in two weeks.[55][56] Its opening at the Music Hall saw it become the number one film at the US box office, where it remained for its seven weeks at the Music Hall.[57] By the end of August, it had grossed $2,568,000 from 139 engagements ($26.8 million in 2023 dollars[58]).[59]
According to MGM records, the film earned theatrical rentals of $5,740,000 in the United States and Canada and $4.1 million elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $837,000.[2]
Critical reception
North by Northwest holds a 97% rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 113 reviews, with an average rating of 9.3/10. The site states the critical consensus as: "Gripping, suspenseful and visually iconic, this late-period Hitchcock classic laid the groundwork for countless action thrillers to follow."[60] On Metacritic, it has a score of 98 out of 100, based on reviews from 16 critics.[61] In 1998, Time Out conducted a poll, and North by Northwest was voted the twelfth greatest film of all time.[62] The Village Voice ranked North by Northwest at No. 49 in its "Top 250 Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.[63] Entertainment Weekly voted it the 44th-greatest film of all time in 1999.[64] The film ranks at No. 98 in Empire's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[65] The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay No. 21 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.[66] It is ranked the 40th-greatest American film by the American Film Institute.[67] The film was voted at No. 28 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.[68] In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made, North by Northwest was ranked 53rd among critics;[69] and in the 2022 polls, the film was ranked 45th among critics.[70] In 2010, The Guardian ranked it as the second-best action and war film of all time.[71] North by Northwest was ranked 13th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.[72] In 2022, Time Out named North by Northwest the greatest thriller film ever made.[73]
Time called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining".[74] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times made it a "Critic's Pick" and said it was the "year's most scenic, intriguing and merriest chase"; he also complimented the two leads:
Cary Grant, a veteran member of the Hitchcock acting varsity, was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam. He handles the grimaces, the surprised look, the quick smile, ... and all the derring-do with professional aplomb and grace, In casting Eva Marie Saint as his romantic vis-à-vis, Mr. Hitchcock has plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore. Although she is seemingly a hard, designing type, she also emerges both the sweet heroine and a glamorous charmer.[75]
Film critic Charles Champlin saw the film as an "anthology of typical Hitchcockian situations" and was particularly taken by the scene and suspense in which Grant's character avoids death when attacked by a crop-dusting plane in the cornfields, which he believed was representative of Hitchcock's finest work.[76] Sight & Sound critic Penelope Houston called it "the purest piece of entertainment filmmaking".[77]
The London edition of Time Out, reviewing the film nearly a half-century after its initial release, commented:
Fifty years on, you could say that Hitchcock's sleek, wry, paranoid thriller caught the zeitgeist perfectly: Cold War shadiness, secret agents of power, urbane modernism, the ant-like bustle of city life, and a hint of dread behind the sharp suits of affluence. Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill, the film's sharply dressed ad exec who is sucked into a vortex of mistaken identity, certainly wouldn't be out of place in Mad Men. But there's nothing dated about this perfect storm of talent, from Hitchcock and Grant to writer Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success), co-stars James Mason and Eva Marie Saint, composer Bernard Herrmann and even designer Saul Bass, whose opening-credits sequence still manages to send a shiver down the spine.[78]
Author and journalist Nick Clooney praised Lehman's original story and sophisticated dialogue, calling the film "certainly Alfred Hitchcock's most stylish thriller, if not his best".[79]
Awards
North by Northwest was nominated for three Academy Awards—Best Film Editing (George Tomasini), Best Art Direction – Set Decoration, Color (William A. Horning, Robert F. Boyle, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace and Frank R. McKelvy), and Best Original Screenplay (Ernest Lehman)—at the 32nd Academy Awards ceremony.[80] Two of the three awards went instead to Ben-Hur, and the other went to Pillow Talk. The film—and Lehman specifically—also won a 1960 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Hitchcock received his second Silver Shell for Best Director award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. (He was also awarded the Silver Shell the year before for Vertigo.)[81][82]
In 1995, North by Northwest was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "10 Top 10"—the best 10 films in 10 "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. North by Northwest was acknowledged as the seventh-best film in the mystery genre.[83] It was also listed as No. 40 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies,[84] No. 4 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills,[85] and No. 55 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).[86]
