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An ESL / EFL Online Gap-Fill Quiz on North By Northwest

North by Northwest is a 1959 American film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The was written by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock ". It is a tale of mistaken . An innocent man is pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization who want to stop his interference in their plans to smuggle out microfilm containing government . Author and journalist Nick Clooney praised Lehman's original story and sophisticated , calling the film, "certainly Alfred Hitchcock's most thriller, if not his best".

North by Northwest was for three Academy Awards for Film Editing, Art Direction, and Original Screenplay. All three Oscars went instead to Ben-Hur. The movie site Rotten Tomatoes said the film was ", suspenseful and visually iconic" and claims it "laid the groundwork for countless action thrillers to ." In June 2008, the American Film Institute said North by Northwest was the seventh best film in the mystery . Fifty years after its , “Time” magazine said it was still a great movie today, saying “there’s nothing dated about this perfect storm of talent” and that the “opening- sequence still manages to send a shiver down the .”