Test Your Knowledge of Hitchcock's Classic

North by Northwest: A 1959 Film by Alfred Hitchcock

• North by Northwest is a 1959 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason.

• The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures."

• The film is about mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle microfilm out of the country.

• It is one of several Hitchcock films to feature a music score by Bernard Herrmann and an opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass.

• North by Northwest is often listed among the greatest films of all time and is listed among the canonical Hitchcock films of the 1950s.

• It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1995.

• The film was made in Paramount's VistaVision widescreen process, and only two VistaVision films were made at MGM, the other being High Society.

• The crop-duster scene in the film was ranked as the "greatest movie moment" of all time by Empire magazine in 2009.

• Cary Grant's gray suit worn throughout the film was named the best suit in film history by a panel of fashion experts in 2006 and has been copied for other films.

• North by Northwest was released on Blu-ray Disc in 2009 as a special 50th-anniversary edition, restored and remastered from original VistaVision elements.

• 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.

• Hitchcock's cameo in the film is seen getting a bus door slammed in his face, just as his credit is appearing on the screen.

• The film's opening title sequence features extended use of kinetic typography.Summary of "North by Northwest":

• 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.

• It holds a "Certified Fresh" 97% rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 113 reviews, with an average rating of 9.3/10.

• In 1998, Time Out conducted a poll, and North by Northwest was voted the 12th-greatest film of all time.

• The Village Voice ranked North by Northwest at No. 49 in its "Top 250 Best Films of the Century" list in 1999.

• The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay No. 21 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

• The film was voted at No. 28 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008.

• In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made, North by Northwest was ranked 53rd among critics.

• North by Northwest was ranked 13th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.

• The film was nominated for three Academy Awards—Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction – Set Decoration, Color, and Best Original Screenplay—at the 32nd Academy Awards ceremony.

• 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."

• The film is considered to be a masterpiece for its themes of deception, mistaken identity, and moral relativism in the Cold War era.

• The title North by Northwest is a subject of debate.

• North by Northwest was adapted as a stage play by Carolyn Burns.