It’s one of those Hitchcock movies where none of the character development feels organic, and while the basic plot is clear, the engine of it is totally muddled, and you keep ending up in these weird little side rooms of the story — but the dialogue is so dry, and the side rooms are so much more interesting, that it ends up working. It’s shot tremendously — that last ten-minute sequence is amazing — and you don’t have to pay terribly close attention (and shouldn’t). … I like older Hitchcock better, just generally; it’s got more snap, it’s less obsessed with itself. I watched North by Northwest recently as well, and I didn’t make a note of it here because I just…didn’t really have much to say. It’s fine; I liked watching it; Cary Grant is a joy, as always; it just seemed a little leaden and bogged down in Hitchcock’s reputation. The older stuff — Rope, The Lady Vanishes — just feels like better storytelling to me, not so portentous and long, while some of the fifties films…Vertigo is so joyless and hysterical in spots, and it’s my opinion that Jimmy Stewart is wrong for that role and opposite that actress.

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