To Catch a Thief

In comparison to Vertigo or North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief is a slightly more lighthearted Hitchcock film that sees a reformed cat burgler John Robie (Cary Grant) trying to clear his name while a copycat lurks the French Riviera. While Robie does this he has to avoid capture by the police and begins playing a cat-and-mouse game with a possible suspect, Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly). Meanwhile, Frances suspects Robie of committing the robberies, and the audience is left guessing too!

I didn't get into this Hitchcock film as much as some of his other 1950s stuff. There are some great moments and the film is realistic about dealing with the language barrier between English and French-speaking characters, and the whole whodunnit plot keeps the viewing guessing despite how much we might suspect certain characters at various points. But I just didn't feel all that invested in Robie's plight, and the usual psychological subtext that makes some of Hitchcock's stuff so intense or endurable was just played down too much. There are some cat and gambling motifs throughout, and I did like the allusion to Frances and Robie having nonmarital sex offscreen (Frances' mother [Jessie Royce Landis] asks her "Just what did he steal from you?" in this cheeky sort of way, and Kelly looks offended and embarrassed as if he just stole her virginity, "Oh mother!")

Robie is a man with an interesting backstory (it involves the French Resistance) but is also completely practical and angst-free despite the bad wrap he gets from the local community (elegantly symbolised by the splat of an egg on a window that Robie stands behind). I loved the bit where Robie gets asked about the war, "Did you kill many people?" - the cliched response is for the hero to get all moody and evade the question, but Grant cheerfully replies, "72". There's one good point that he makes about the hypocrisy of society when it comes to a reformed thief like himself, in regards to the line people draw between casual everyday thieving and the things that people get convicted for. It's a great character for Grant, but I have to question the wardrobe choices made for him - his stripey top causes his chest to strobe at various points.


Hitchcock uses lots of location filming and even some helicopter shots to help establish the exotic setting (getting their money's worth) and mixes it with as much studio filming as he can get away with. He even intercuts interior water shots with location work in the sea so he can film his close-ups in the studio! The funny thing about Hitchcock is that his mixing of filmstock and use of bluescreen never feels out of place or unnatural due to the sense of artiface he has cultivated for the look of his films by this point (1955). All of his shots are so carefully constructed that they create an internal kind of reality where bluescreen is a normal part of this world.

One more thing before I go, there's a massive hole in the plot's logic that probably should have been addressed. All Robie really needed to do to clear his name is to let the police take him and then wait for another robbery to be commited while he was in custody. While he's at large and the robberies go on he just makes it look worse for himself. Then again, if this didn't happen it wouldn't be much of a film. Like I said earlier, I just didn't really feel the wow factor with this one. Grant and Kelly have a great chemistry together, and Kelly is at her radiant and playful best, so it's still easily worth a watch as a lesser film by Hitchcock is still a pretty good film!

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by John Michael Hayes, based on the novel To Catch a Thief.
KEY ACTORS: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessica Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigette Auber

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel To Catch aThief by David Dodge, written in 1952.
- Hitchcock cast Grace Kelly in three of his films - the other two are Dial M For Murder and Rear Window. He would've cast her in Marnie as well but she had retired from acting by then.
- Cary Grant made four films with Hitchcock. His other three are Suspicion, Notorious and North by Northwest.
- For another fix of thieving on the riviera, check out the comedy Bedtime Story.
- Other lighthearted and twisty films about thievery include How to Steal a Million, Gambit, Topkapi, Arabesque and Charade. They arguably all take some note of inspiration from To Catch a Thief.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Cinematography (Colour). Also nominated for Best Art Direction (Colour) and Best Costume Design (Colour).
Venice Film Festival - won the Golden Lion Award.