To Catch A Thief (DVD)

...first year. I had opted to do American Studies as a first year option and unbeknown to me (who had looked forward to history and politics) the entire spring term's work was Film Studies. We had to watch one film a week for the fourteen weeks or so of the term. These ranged from early silent movies, all the way up to modern Tarantino. About week six or so, we were shown Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 film Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and a blonde actress ...
...(1951), Rear Window (1953) and To Catch a Thief (1955). Hitchcock's work intrigued and engaged me, and I am now in the process of completing my Hitchcock DVD collection. And so being instantly smitten with Grace back on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in 1995 led me to gain a passionate interest in films and film making.

To Catch a Thief is typical Hitchcock. It combines many, if not all, of his trademark features. It has the iconic ice ... more

My burgeoning interest in classic films began quite by accident, when I was at university in my first year. I had opted to do American Studies as a first year option and unbeknown to me (who had looked forward to history and politics) the entire spring term's work was Film Studies. We had to watch one film a week for the fourteen weeks or so of the term. These ranged from early silent movies, all the way up to modern Tarantino. About week six or so, we were shown Alfred Hitchcock's 1953 film Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and a blonde actress who I instantly fell in love with the moment she appeared on screen. She was Grace Kelly. Mesmerised by this divine perfection of a woman in the few years afterwards I sought out all of her work, and became fascinated by the work of Afred Hitchcock, for whom Grace did three films, Dial 'M' for Murder (1951), Rear Window (1953) and To Catch a Thief (1955). Hitchcock's work intrigued and engaged me, and I am now in the process of completing my Hitchcock DVD collection. And so being instantly smitten with Grace back on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in 1995 led me to gain a passionate interest in films and film making.

To Catch a Thief is typical Hitchcock. It combines many, if not all, of his trademark features. It has the iconic ice queen blonde, Frances (Francie) Stevens (Kelly), the charming bad boy made good slightly down on his luck hero, John Robie (Cary Grant), combined with an interwoven, layered plot, a sophisiticated and charming screenplay and a slightly comedic twist at the end. Not to mention the brief cameo that is the trade mark of the Hitchcock film. The film is a gorgeous masterpiece of comedy, suspense, sexual innuendo and tension, even a thriller..it combines all these features and plays them off against one another brilliantly. Very few directors can even come close to mastering this skill but Alfred Hitchcock not only mastered it he made it his trademark. The casting is simply perfect, the two main characters, complement each other wonderfully. John Michael Hayes' screenplay is the gel that holds this eclectic mix of film making together, it is light hearted, sophisticated, clever. It makes To Catch a Thief into a truly classic film.

To Catch a Thief was originally a novel written by David Dodge, not incredibly successful, it was read by Hitchcock who bought the film rights to it back in the late 1940s. He then commissioned John Michael Hayes, who had written an equally superb screenplay for 'Rear Window' to write the dialogue. The rest, as they say is history.

The film is set entirely in the beautiful South of France, on the French Riviera. Back in the 1950s this was the height of sophistication with Cannes being the heady focal point of the great and the good. Cary Grant plays John Robie, a 'retired' jewel thief who has apparantly gone straight and wants nothing more than a quiet life living in an impressive villa overlooking the Mediterranean. However, across the riviera a spate of jewel heists by a silent and stealthy burglar known as 'La Chat' (The Cat) has led to the eye of suspicion falling on Robie, as The Cat's methods are identical to his own. Inspired by the saying from which the film gets its title, 'It takes a thief to catch a thief' Robie heads into Cannes to try and work out The Cat's methods and plot his next move so he can catch him, get the gendarmes out of his impressively brylcreemed hair and return to his idyllic peaceful life. Robie meets an insurance agent from Lloyd's of London, Hughson (played by the esteemed British actor John Williams) and tries to persuade him to give him a dossier of information on who owns the most expensive jewels in the Riviera. This leads him to meet a rich but somewhat obnoxious widow named Mrs Jessie Stevens (jessie Royce Landis) and her delightful and much more sophisticated daughter, Francie.

Robie, needs to gain an introduction to the two women and engineers a cheeky and daring masquerade to draw their attention to him involving a gambling chip, the cleavage of an amply endowed frenchwoman and an ill thought out cover story, that he is a lumber salesman called Mr Burns from Oregon. (Was this deliberately meant to be so unconvincing, for where are the lumber trees in the South of France?). Jessie, crudely nouveau riche, is taken in with this, Francie however, being the shrewd, intelligent epitome of gorgeousness she is sees right through his attempts at deception. Rather than expose him she decides to play him at his own game. And so this leads to one of the best seduction plots in film history. Hayes' screenplay comes alive with the sexual tension, innuendo and frustration between the two of them. Pic- nicking on chicken in Francie's beautiful blue sports car she unsubtly asks him 'would you like a leg or a breast?' with that ever present twinkle in her eye and flirtatious edge to her voice. Later on, in the hotel room she says to him 'You are about to see one of the most spectacular sights in the whole riviera' he looks wantingly at her, to which she replies 'I was talking about the fireworks!' She clearly infuriates Robie to the point when he flatly refuses to engage her in her own flirtatious game.
'You're an insecure, pampered woman accustomed to attracting men. But you're not quite sure whether they're attracted to you or to your money. You may never know.' he tells her. She seems somewhat offended at this yet this tete a tete continues throughout the movie, to an somewhat predictable yet no less enjoyable conclusion. What certainly isn't predictable however is the twist in the tail, when the identity of the thief is finally revealed at the climax of the film which is brought to a conclusion behind the backdrop of a 18th century themed masked ball for the great and the good of the Riviera (and with the resplendant jewellery on display like an open pigeon coop for our mysterious thief).

What makes To Catch a Thief such a wonderful film is, for me, the characters of John Robie and Francie Stevens and the chemistry between them and the style and panache with which which Cary Grant and Grace Kelly played them. John Robie is supposed to be thirty five years old according to the original screenplay. Grant, by 1954 was fifty years old. Grace was half his age at only twenty five, and she appears somewhat younger in this film, girlishly naive and attractively imaginative. Yet despite this massive age difference they play perfectly opposite one another. It is difficult to imagine a more attractive partnership. Grant has to be one of the most charismatic and stylish male leads of film history making the contemporary likes of Messrs Pitt, Depp and Cruise seem simply mediocre. Likewise for Grace, there is simply no one since that has reflected her beauty and poise and elegance. What makes her so beautiful for me is the way she never ever looks any less stunning, no matter what she is wearing, whatever make up she has or whatever lighting. The only actress to come within a mile of her has been Gwyneth Paltrow, who was frequently compared to Grace in her younger days. Grace's career was short, only four of five years. It was while filming To Catch a Thief that she met Prince Rainier of Monaco and subequently married him. She was forever denied to the film going public almost imprisoned by the so called royalty of Monaco.

The Cinematography in To Catch a Thief is also superb, it was filmed in the revolutionary new technology called 'VistaVision' which was designed to make colours brighter and the images sharper. Evidence of this is the slightly painted on effect of the colouring and the fact the backgrounds always stay in focus (deliberately designed to magnify the beauty of the South of France). The film was also ground breaking in the use of a helicopter to film the superb car chase scene along the winding coast road (Ironically it was on these very roads that Grace Kelly lost her life in a car crash in 1982) The shots, panning down from the helicopter to Francie driving like a maniac with a wry half smile on her face and Robie expressing his fear by gripping his knees in terror is brilliant. The start of the film is inspired, there is no dialogue for about ten minutes, just pictures to set the scene. A travel agent's window 'If you love life you'll love France' a black cat walking across rooftops, a woman screaming, an empty jewellery box...Robert Burk's Oscar for Cinematography was well deserved.

What is the enduring legacy of To Catch a Thief to me is the fact it was Grace's last film. Soon afterwards she married her 'prince' and retired from film making. It was reported she was unhappy, she was, like Francie 'an insecure, pampered woman accustomed to attracting men'. Attract them she did, and with mesmerising performances like in this film she still attracts them, even long after her death.

They don't make films like this anymore. What I like is subtlety and intrigue, the firework display while they apparantly make love tells you everything you need to know without it being spoiled by their writhing bodies as one would imagine the film would show in explicit detail were it made today.  

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