Which Hitchcock film features a famous scene set at the United Nations headquarters?
Answer
North by Northwest
Answer
North by Northwest
Which Hitchcock film features a famous scene set at the United Nations headquarters? North by Northwest. The 1959 thriller opens its central espionage chase in New York, where advertising executive Roger Thornhill becomes entangled in a case of mistaken identity involving a supposed government agent.
The United Nations setting helps establish Thornhill’s danger and confusion. He meets the mysterious Lester Townsend at the building, only for the encounter to end in murder and for Thornhill to be wrongly implicated. The sequence turns an ordinary public landmark into a place of sudden menace, a recurring Hitchcock technique.
North by Northwest is often confused with Hitchcock’s other location-driven thrillers. Rear Window is set largely inside a Greenwich Village apartment, Vertigo centers on San Francisco and its psychological mysteries, and The Man Who Knew Too Much moves between locations including Morocco and London. The same North by Northwest also contains the crop-duster attack and the climactic pursuit around Mount Rushmore, making it one of Hitchcock’s most recognizable landmark films.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026