The official mystery of Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest is the whereabouts of the man whom Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill has been dangerously mistaken for. The quest drives the frantic narrative of this spy vs. spy thriller, which turned 60 this week.

A puzzle more germane to 2019 would be to ponder how the movies in general, and the James Bond franchise in particular, might have evolved differently, had not Hitch pointed the way with his most entertaining film of all. Would summer blockbusters and Agent 007 be the same?

North by Northwest premiered in Chicago on July 1, 1959, a city and date not known, then or now, for red-carpet launches of blue-chip cinema. The summer movie season back then was mainly for lesser fare, since most theatres lacked air conditioning and moviegoers were distracted by outdoor amusements — and also by the rapidly encroaching rival known as television.

The big selling point for North by Northwest, even more than its marquee billing of Hollywood superstar Grant and co-stars Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, is that it was an action film lensed in the widescreen VistaVision format, an attempt by movie studios to one-up TV’s small-screen appeal.

Hitchcock made a promotional ad for the film, viewable on YouTube, in which he pitched North by Northwest as less of an espionage thriller and more of a adventurous trek across America, visiting such breathtaking landmarks as the United Nations building in New York, the plains of the American Midwest and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

Cary Grant teams with director Alfred Hitchcock for the fourth and final time in the superlative espionage caper, North by Northwest, judged as one of the American Film Institute's Top 100 American Films and recipient of three Academy Award nominations.

Hitch assured audiences that it would be “a vacation from all your problems, as it was for me.” The pitch evidently worked, because the movie was an immediate hit, even though it typically played in just one theatre per city (in Toronto, it was at the Loew’s Downtown at Yonge and Queen Sts., now the Elgin Theatre).

Had Hollywood’s wide-release strategies and multiplex theatres of later years been available in 1959, North by Northwest might well be considered the original summer blockbuster, an honour usually accorded to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, which came out in 1975. Hitchcock proved to studio bosses that moviegoers would willingly pack into a sweaty cinema, given exceptional enticement.

But North by Northwest can lay claim to an even more prestigious achievement. It’s the template for the 007 franchise and many of its trademark features, among them the Bond villain and the “Bond girl.”

In fact, Bond author Ian Fleming was so impressed with Grant’s unflappable bravado and comic timing as “wrong man” hero Thornhill — a Madison Avenue ad man pursued by foreign spies and the CIA — that Fleming wanted the actor to play James Bond when his novels became movies.

So did film producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, who offered the role to Grant when they were casting for Dr. No, the 1962 movie that launched the 007 franchise. Grant turned them down, because he was unwilling to commit to multiple films. The role was instead offered to a relative unknown named Sean Connery.

But you can’t watch North by Northwest without thinking that it’s a Bond film by any other name. Grant’s Thornhill set the pace for the drinking, womanizing and danger-flouting behaviour of 007s to come, as he dodged bullets and pursuers in cars, trains and a crop-dusting airplane, the latter the spark for the film’s most thrilling scene.

Thornhill’s chief adversary, played by James Mason, was the archetype of the charismatic-yet-ruthless Bond villain. Eva Marie Saint, meanwhile, was the progenitor of the Bond girl: quick to flirt but also to fire a gun, as occasion demanded.

Grant set an impeccable fashion standard while on the run. His grey Savile Row suit, which holds up even when doused with crop insecticide, is simply the greatest of all male movie attires. (Movie geek that I am, I stole the look recently for my son Jake’s wedding.)

Something else that North by Northwest can take credit for is helping to make the movies and society less prudish. The bawdy banter between Grant’s and Saint’s characters, in which sex is taken as a given — although never shown — brought tut-tuts from Eisenhower-era moralists, including two right here at the Toronto Star.

Staff writer Ron Johnson predicted two weeks prior to the film’s release that it might not “escape the eager scissors of the Ontario censors” because “the dialogue leaves The Moon Is Blue looking like a kindergarten grammar exercise.” In fact, North by Northwest wasn’t cut by Ontario censors, who gave it a “PG” (parental guidance) rating.

Star critic Nathan Cohen, never a man to mince words, thundered in his column that the sexual innuendo in North by Northwest “has obviously been tossed in just to titillate the audience. As such it is distasteful in itself, and offensive in its pseudo-moralizing.”

The sexual revolution of the 1960s would soon prove both men wrong. Yet despite their pearl-clutching proclamations, both declared North by Northwest to be exceptional entertainment. On this, we can all agree.

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Quebec projections: This is a banner month for award-winning Québécois cinema on Toronto movie screens. Sébastien Pilote’s The Fireflies Are Gone (read my review) opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Over at The Royal on College St., the Quebec on Screen series running July 5-7 will show A Colony (Geneviève Dulude-De Celles), The Great Darkened Days (Maxime Giroux) and Genesis (Philippe Lesage). Go see them!

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