To avoid being bothered by his busybody mother, Roger Thornhill (Grant) checks into his hotel under the name of 'George Kaplan'. But another George Kaplan is already registered at the hotel ? and when two thugs show up to collect him, Thornhill is thrust into an adventure chock-full of espionage, love, deception and danger.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehmann planned North By Northwest as the ultimate Hitchcock picture, and I'd say he achieved his aim spectacularly. Certainly, it's the perfect distillation of the kind of film Hitchcock had been making since the thirties with The 39 Steps. Throw in a dash of classic suspense sequences, a few pitch-perfect performances (including Cary Grant at his charming best, James Mason as a smooth baddy, and Eve Marie Saint being suitably mysterious and blonde) and a tight, ever-twisting plot and what do you have? A package that hits the ground running and never really lets go until the finale (which wraps up the entire complicated story in a little under sixty seconds)

Our story begins in a San Francisco bird shop one Friday morning, where the heiress Melanie Daniels (Hedren) meets the lawyer Mitch Brenner (Taylor). The next day, Melanie finds herself driving a pair of caged birds 60 miles north to the seaside hamlet of Bodega Bay ? where Mitch spends the weekends with his mother Lydia (Tandy) and 11-year-old sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright, who went on to play Lambert in Alien). Soon the light comedy gives way to a more sinister tone, with a series of increasingly violent attacks taking place against the backdrop of the developing romance between Melanie and Mitch.

The strength of the film is the way the suspense is built - the scene in which Melanie is waiting outside the school is a particular standout. This is all the more remarkable because the film doesn't use any music at all, with the soundtrack provided instead by electronically orchestrated bird noises. The only place I found this to be a problem is in the climactic scenes ? they don't seem to have the impact that they should, despite the use of frenetic editing and techniques like the triple-cut.

The Birds is technically excellent - you can sense that every angle, every movement, every frame was meticulously planned, intended to evoke a particular response. The horror isn't completely understated ? we witness a couple of quite horrifying deaths ? but the body count never rises to self-parodying levels.

And of course, don't forget to watch out for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance