�Thats's funny, that plane�s dustin� crops where there ain�t no crops.� It�s the cue for one of the most famous scenes in a film which, 50 years on from its first release, remains pretty close to peerless.

R/I (PG)
*****
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
With: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason

"That's funny, that plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops."

It's the cue for one of the most famous scenes in a film which, 50 years on from its first release, remains pretty close to peerless in its field. As exquisitely put together as its leading man's iconic grey suit, with dialogue that's twice as sharp again, North by Northwest starring Cary Grant is the cat's pyjamas of stylish, romantic thrillers.

Screenplay writer Ernest Lehman, whose list of credits include The Sound of Music, West Side Story and Somebody Up There Likes Me, crafted a classic Hitchcockian plot that was not so much whodunnit as "why the heck are they doing this to me?"

Grant is Roger Thornhill, the Madison Avenue ad man who falls victim to a bad case of mistaken identity. Though guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Thornhill finds himself forced to run for his life, along the way encountering the glacial and mysterious Eve (Eva Marie Saint), James Mason's villainous smoothie, and, in another landmark scene in every sense, all those president's faces at Mount Rushmore.

Hitchcock deployed most of his favourite devices in the triple Oscar nominated North by Northwest, among them a cool blonde in Saint, a MacGuffin in the shape of the top secret microfilm everyone is supposedly after, and, above all, the lethal charm of Grant himself.

Dear old dapper Cary might be in near constant peril but he is never less than irresistibly witty and cool about it all, even if he does give in and glow a bit at the height of the crop duster scene. Magnificent.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, till July 9.