NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) -- The hero (named Roger Thornhill, but mistaken for a nonexistent man named Kaplan) was previously kidnapped and almost murdered, but escaped. Now, he and his disbelieving mother are in a New York City hotel room, and the killers are still on his trail. (EDITORIAL COMMENT: The plotting is serious; but like many other films directed by Hitchcock, there is a very high amount of irony and humor. In this case, the humor partly resides in the fact that the leading man is Cary Grant, a movie superstar at that time. The idea of his being an "ordinary" NYC businessman was fundamentally ironic. Hence the humorous tone of some of the film scoring.)

• NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) -- The hero (named Roger Thornhill, but mistaken for a nonexistent man named Kaplan) was previously kidnapped and almost murdered, but escaped. Now, he and his disbelieving mother are in a New York City hotel room, and the killers are still on his trail. (EDITORIAL COMMENT: The plotting is serious; but like many other films directed by Hitchcock, there is a very high amount of irony and humor. In this case, the humor partly resides in the fact that the leading man is Cary Grant, a movie superstar at that time. The idea of his being an "ordinary" NYC businessman was fundamentally ironic. Hence the humorous tone of some of the film scoring.)