When screenwriter Ernest Lehman was assigned to work for Alfred Hitchcock, he told the famed "master of suspense": "I'd like to write the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." The result, released in 1959, was North by Northwest, and although—fortunately—it did not end all Hitchcock pictures, it did seem to offer a summation of the best of the director's work up to that time. Starring Cary Grant in a fast-paced thriller of mistaken identity and cold war intrigue, North by Northwest had it all: glamour, mystery, wit, hairbreadth escapes, macabre humor, romance, and a breakneck cross-country chase culminating in a literally cliff-hanging climax atop the Mount Rushmore monument. Also, it was in this film that Hitchcock inserted one of his most famous set-pieces: Grant, alone near a seemingly deserted cornfield, suddenly being stalked and strafed by a crop-dusting airplane. A big hit...