'North By Northwest'

For my money, North by Northwest is the perfect Alfred Hitchcock film. His best and as close to perfection as the man got and he spent his career getting really close.

It's a brilliant, funny script set around Cary Grant being mistaken as some sort of American agent tracking down ol' James Mason, who's attempting to smuggle certain confidential information out of the country.

What's interesting is that Grant (Thornhill), naturally, denies being the agent, George Kaplan. Once he is almost murdered, he decides to investigate to either prove that he was right (that he was kidnapped and nearly murdered) or to clear his name as Kaplan so these other guys won't try to nearly kill him again.

At a certain point, he becomes Kaplan. He doesn't make this decision. It happens. As soon as he talks to the hotel maid as a means of finding out more information about Kaplan, he becomes Kaplan. Accordingly, he doesn't really blame James Mason and his goons for trying to kill him. e not only adopts Kaplan's name, but his problems. He becomes Kaplan.

Of course, Kaplan doesn't exist. He's a MacGuffin. Or so says Hitchcock:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" and the other answers 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well', the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

A MacGuffin is nothing. It's a plot device used to divert the audience's from the actual plot. Kaplan -- and, accordingly, Grant's character -- do not matter. They're used to distract everyone of the real plot: James Mason trying to get out of the country with the microfilm.

What shocks me the most is the beauty and clarity of the film. There are some shots, individually, that awe me for their color and clarity as if they were done with a high-definition camera. I don't think you see it this good with any other Hitchcock.