Alfred Hitchcock · 1959 · thriller

Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 chase masterpiece. Mistaken for a secret agent who does not exist, Madison Avenue ad man Roger Thornhill is pursued clear across America, from a framed murder in New York, west by train to Chicago, to a crop-duster ambush in the open prairie, and finally to a life-or-death scramble over the carved faces of Mount Rushmore.

1. 1
   New York

   The Plaza bar, and an advertising man who raises his hand for a bellboy at the wrong moment - taken for a government agent called George Kaplan who does not exist, and walked out at gunpoint.

2. 2
   Glen Cove

   The Townsend house on Long Island, where Vandamm has him held, filled with bourbon and put behind the wheel of a car on the cliff road - the first attempt on his life, and the reason nobody believes a word of it afterwards.

3. 3
   New York

   Back to the city with nothing anyone will credit - the police, the UN building and a knife in a diplomat's back with Thornhill holding it, photographed for every front page in America.

4. 4
   Chicago

   He boards the Twentieth Century Limited at Grand Central with the police behind him and falls in with Eve Kendall, who hides him in her compartment and is not what she appears.

5. 5
   Prairie Stop

   Sent to a lonely crossroads in the empty farmland, he is hunted across the fields by a murderous crop-dusting plane.

6. 6
   Chicago

   Back into the city: Eve's room at the Ambassador East, the art auction where Thornhill bids nonsense to get himself arrested, and Midway airport, where the Professor finally tells him what is going on.

7. 7
   Rapid City

   The cafeteria at the Mount Rushmore visitor centre, and a shooting staged in front of witnesses so that Eve can go back to Vandamm with her cover intact - which Thornhill only understands afterwards.

8. 8
   Mount Rushmore

   The chase ends in South Dakota, in a desperate scramble across the stone faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore.

9. 9
   New York

   The last shot: a train going east, Eve pulled up into the upper berth, and the sleeper running into a tunnel - the single filthiest cut Hitchcock ever got past the censors.