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Cary Grant and Grace Kelly basically have a nice French holiday in To Catch a Thief |
Director: Alfred
Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant (John Robie “The Cat”), Grace Kelly
(Frances Stevens), Jessie Royce Landis (Jessie Stevens), John Williams (HH
Hughson), Charles Vanel (Monsieur Bertani), Brigitte Auber (Danielle Foussard),
Jean Martinelli (Foussard)
One of the nice things about being a powerful film director
is, if you fancy a nice holiday in the sun, get a film greenlit in a nice
location and settle in for a nice vacation. That’s perhaps the real story
behind To Catch a Thief, a popular
Hitchcock film that is, at best, a second tier entry in his CV – but has some
truly lovely location shots of the French Riviera in it.
The film meanders through a plot that never really heads
anywhere particularly interesting, other than crossing off some of Hitchcock’s
familiar beats. Cary Grant coasts along as suave former French Resistance
fighter and infamous jewel thief “The Cat”, now retired to a lovely vineyard on
the French Riviera (presumably off the back of his ill-gotten gains). His
French resistance past has basically made him immune from persecution, until a
copy-cat thief starts to plunder the jewels of the rich. With Robie Suspect #1,
who better to catch a thief than…another thief?
To Catch a Thief
is so much about its style, its expensive Hollywood production standards and
luxurious location shooting, that it almost forgets to have any substance at
all. I suppose that doesn’t completely matter when this is very much one of
Hitchcock’s entertainments – a luscious change of pace from his previous film Rear Window, which was all about
confined spaces, voyeurism and seedy thrills. Here instead the focus is on
beauty, charm and frothy comedy, with the plot unspooling so gently, that the
final resolution is virtually thrown in as an afterthought.
Instead the focus is more on the extended game of flirting
between Grant and Grace Kelly as daughter of wealthy American jewel owner
Jessie Royce Landis. Grant was, of course, twice as old as Kelly (and only eight
years younger of course than Landis, who played his mother four years later in North
by Northwest), but the two make for a chemistry laden couple. (Hitchcock
cheekily has one seductive late night conversation intercut – and end – with a
fireworks explosion. No prizes for guessing what that symbolises).
Much of this fire comes from Grace Kelly who, fresh from her
Oscar win for Best Actress, is brimming with confidence. Clever, sexy and
dangerous – she’s excited by Robie’s life of crime and loves the idea of
joining him in a life of crime, don’t get many leading ladies of the time being
as daring as that – Kelly oozes sex appeal and looks like she could eat Grant
for breakfast. It takes all the experienced cool and charm of Grant – who
adjusts the part so neatly into his wheelhouse, he feels like he could play the
thing standing on his head – to keep up. Kelly is radiant and magnetic and
walks off with the movie. So much so you wish it gave her slightly more to do.
But then the plot of the film doesn’t give anyone much to
do. Robert Burks (Oscar-winning) photography is lovely, really capturing the
beauty and elegance of the French Riviera. But the events around it are nothing
to write home about, an underpowered caper with little of the director’s energy
and fire or his subversive creepiness. The identity of the copy-cat will be a
mystery perhaps only to those who have never seen a movie, while the generally
predictable beats in every scene make it feel like a hodge-podge pulled
together from the offcuts of better films.
It’s got a lovely feeling of a holiday adventure for all and
sundry. Plenty of French actors dutifully trudge through – although to a man their
characters are either incompetent, bullies or crooks – with The Wages of Fear Charles Vanel clearly
dubbed as a seedy ex-Resistance fighter turned restaurateur. It’s all very well
mounted, entertaining enough and leaves almost nothing for you to digest after
it’s finished.
All true....and that's why it's good. the reality of the riviera setting IS the plot; in this one, Hitchcock reaffirms FILM as a visual reality above all, hence the endless repetition of film stills showing the Cote d'Azur landscape behind characters. 'Plot'is just an extra excuse to film in the first place.
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