Film Pretty Alright I Guess
Let's get this out of the way right now: this isn't in any way, shape, or form a bad movie. It's got a great premise, the dialogue is actually rather snappy and witty without a hint of the dour gloominess that would become more popular in the genre over time, and the individual scenes and characters are all excellent.
Thornhill is a well-sketched everyman; not heroic but not callous. He doesn't reveal sudden action chops or fighting skills, not even a military background, yet he still manages to maneuver out of life-and-death situations with his quick thinking and observation skills without totally straining credulity. Eve, the Femme Fatale, balances her mystery and menace with moments of humanity, and their romance scenes are actually kind of sexy for the time period. Even the detestable villains are surprisingly funny, and despite regular failures never come across as bumbling or foolish. And the Professor adds moral complexity by demonstrating that the heroes' "side" of the Cold War is no less cold and uncaring about the individual. All their actors have incredible chemistry, performing their parts expertly with that classic Hollywood charm.
And the setpieces, whether action or espionage, are almost uniformly fantastic. The crop duster attack in particular is masterful, skillfully combining Dramatic Irony, excellent camerawork and shot composition, slowly building tension, and then a life-and-death rapid chess match that ends explosively. But other scenes, such as a drugged Thornhill having to engage in a high-speed car chase while inebriated, or his managing to escape from an auction house where he is surrounded on all sides by henchmen, are nearly as lovely.
Unfortunately, while individual scenes are great, they just don't cohere well. The plot is kind of a thin excuse to string together thrilling or romantic situations. It's not full of holes, and it doesn't immediately fall apart or anything, but it's not terribly strong either. The stakes are largely personal, and fair enough given the personal focus of the story, but it does nothing to make the whole picture feel less light and breezy.
And the huge runtime doesn't help. A lot of early scenes in particular could've been cut down with minimal losses, and serve only to self-indulgently pad out the first act of the story. Plus, since we care so little about the scope beyond the personal, the MacGuffin in the last part of the film comes across as the transparent device to squeeze out a last bit of conflict it is.
This is not a bad movie by any means, again. But, after watching a bunch of top-grade Hitchcock movies with my little brother before his return to medical school, he confidently pegged this the weakest of the bunch, and I'm inclined to agree.
Film Good suspense, painful romance.
The most famous scene of this film really is the best thing it has to offer.
Roger Thornhill is an ad man who finds himself entangled in spy affairs when he ends up pegged as George Kaplan, a famous agent of interest to sinister forces. Unable to prove he's not Kaplan and later implicated for the murder of a diplomat, Thornhill goes on the run and meets a mysterious woman, Eve, who helps and hurts his goals in turn. What's going on here?
The plot and suspense are good to a certain point. There's a good mysterious setup and some nice twists. The scene with the crop-duster is what everyone knows from this film, and it's genuinely a masterpiece of suspense as the threat of a plane is slowly introduced before it begins targeting Thornhill, with the plane's audio dominating the scene with no dialogue. Genuinely terrifying and perfectly executed. However, the story might go a step too far, as it feels like the perils and twists pile up more than is necessary, leading to a movie that feels longer and more complicated than it might need to be.
The other issue I have with the film is Eve's writing, which showcases Hitchcock's troubling outlook on women pretty well. While she begins her role deliberately seducing Thornhill, it doesn't make their chemistry any less alien and cliché as they pile up innuendos without saying a single line containing interpersonal content that establishes any rapport or connection. It feels like a fantasy of a man who has no understanding of relationships and their dynamic is never sufficiently framed as deliberately hollow. Eve's role also has framing of "good girls have no place in dangerous spy work", with her placed as powerless to escape a job she doesn't like and the hero deciding that she needs to be saved because she's too good for it. It's a confusing picture of women as innocent victims, evil seducers, and erotic clichés all in one, with none of them affording much dignity or nuance even when they're multiple facets of one character. There's also apparently an element of gay coding to one of the villains, and I didn't fully catch it, but that sucks.
This film is best for two things: the cropduster scene and understanding High Anxiety better. It's an engaging thriller but the plot overextends itself and the portrayal of the female lead leaves a lot to be desired.