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When you think of the filmography by , the first words that no doubt come to mind are "horro" and "suspense." Hitchcock had a skillset that let him manipulate the audience like no other filmmaker at that time. Or arguably since. And it seems Hitchcock could also execute the action genre just as flawlessly. In fact, so good was his affinity for action movie thrills that Academy Award-winning director believes the director achieved the "most perfect action ever made."

Guillermo del Toro shared his love of cinema by participating in the Turner Classic Movies selection for March 2025. He chose films like John Ford's The Quiet Man, 1951's An American in Paris, and 1979's Being There. When it came time to speak about Hitchcock's 1959 movie starring Cary Grant, Martin Landau, James Mason, and Eva Marie Saint, del Toro declared:

"North by Northwest, 1959 by Alfred Hitchcock, is a perfect perpetual motion machine and is made by one of the greatest clockwork makers in cinema history: A filmmaker that could blend seamlessly comedy, drama, action, and suspense.

"You can trace some of the roots and tools of Alfred Hitchcock from his English period to his American period. You can see The Lodger getting him to Psycho, and you can see in the same manner The 39 Steps leading to North by Northwest. But they are executed very differently, although thematically they both deal with essentially a couple that has to cross a geography, and in the course of their misadventures become unified and learn to love and trust each other."

In North by Northwest, Grant plays Roger Thornhill, an advertising specialist who is kidnapped by criminals after they mistake him for another man. When he's left for dead, Thornhill decides to dig deeper into the mysterious man in charge of his kidnapping. Eventually, he discovers a major conspiracy involving foreign spies and many suspicious players hiding their true identities.

North by Northwest holds a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and although it was nominated for three Academy Awards, it failed to win any. Regardless, it's considered one of Hitchcock's most important thrillers and a turning point in his career. Del Toro continued, likening the action thriller to James Bond, saying:

"You can also see the overbearing mother figure which is very constant in Hitchcock; the banal hero who learns to value the essence of life as misadventures continue; and the Hitchcock blonde, personified beautifully by Eva Marie Saint; and phenomenal villains, particularly James Mason, who was this upper-class, very articulate villain that Hitchcock tended to favor quite a bit.

"The thing with North by Northwest is that it's a very modern film, not only in its color and design, and the fact that it's almost a musical without music, done very pointedly for MGM in VistaVision. But also by the fact that his action is diagrammatic and as crisp and as clean as anything that anyone can direct now or ever. This makes the movie painterly but cinematic. It never stops. And it prefigures a James Bond film before there was a James Bond film. This is one of the canonical films of Alfred Hitchcock. The most perfect action film ever made in my opinion."

Best known for directing films like The Devil's Backbone, Crimson Peak and, most recently, the Academy Award-winning stop-motion extravaganza Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro will soon resurrect a horror movie classic. The filmmaker is helming a Frankenstein movie for Netflix, starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz, among others. Del Toro's Frankenstein is an adaptation of the classic novel by Mary Shelley and is set to be released in November 2025.

Source: Turner Classic Movies