Hitchcock's North by Northwest: the Birth of the Modern Action Film

1959 was an exciting year in the history of filmmaking. An extraordinary conjunction of talent throughout the globe existed. In France, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, and Resnais all directed their first films, thus establishing the French New Wave. In Italy, Fellini created the elegant La Dolce Vita, and Antonioni gave us L'avventura. Most importantly, though, in America, famed British director Alfred Hitchcock gave us the classic thriller North by Northwest, the father of the modern action film.
Throughout the history of filmmaking, many different genres have thrived such as the romantic comedy, giving us such classics as Bringing up Baby and His Girl Friday. The war film gave us All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The western gave us Stagecoach and The Searchers. Film Noir gave us such films as Sunset Boulevard and Chinatown. The one modern film genre not existing prior to 1959 was that of the modern action film whose entrance as a genre was inaugurated with the release of Hitchcock's psychopolitical thriller North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant.
North by Northwest is your basic espionage thriller involving mistaken identity and a government conspiracy. Cary Grant plays advertising executive Roger Thornhill, who, one evening at his usual club calls over the page boy when his is paging a Mr. George Kaplan. Two mysterious men observing Grant get the idea that Mr. Thornhill is Mr. Kaplan, not simply a man talking to a boy who is paging him. Believing him to be Mr. Kaplan, the two men kidnap Thornhill at gunpoint and whisk him away to a beautiful mansion somewhere outside the city.
An important discussion point is that as to which type of hero Roger Thornhill is. The action hero created through North by Northwest is that of the everyman, only man attractive and witty. He is a reluctant, yet brave, hero. Thornhill is unafraid to make an attempted escape while he is in the captive of these two men.
Thornhill is