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The key to this movie is line Thornhill (Cary Grant) casually utters in the movie’s opening scene, when lying to a woman about to get into taxi ahead of him. Deeper even than Robin Wood would suggest.

It is a much deeper analysis of the construct of masculinity than it first appears. There is no denying that North By Northwest‘s premise - a New York advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, is mistaken for George Kaplan, a secret agent who does not exist - is no mere light entertainment. Goldfinger is a collection of bits, carefully calculated with both eyes on the box office, put end to end with no deeper necessity for what happens next than mere plot nothing except plot develops in the course of it, and, obviously, the essence of organic construction is development.” And the basic essential of a work of art is that it be thematically organic. A film, whether light entertainment or not, is either a work of art or it is nothing. The essential triviality of the James Bond films, in fact, sets off perfectly, by contrast, the depth, the charm, the integrity of Hitchcock’s film. If I fail to be entertained by Goldfinger, it is because there is nothing to engage or retain the attention the result is a nonentity, consequently tedious.

Observing that North By Northwest “corresponds most nearly to the conventional estimate of as a polished light entertainer”, Wood wanted to show that “a light entertainment can have depth, subtlety, finesse, it can embody mature moral values indeed, it seems to me that it must. And defending Hitchcock against such claims in his classic 1965 study, Hitchcock’s Films, Robin Wood condemns Goldfinger in comparison to Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. The same accusation has often been made against the Bond movies.

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