To Catch A Thief

Reviewer: Alyice Edrich

Movie

To Catch A Thief, 1955

Starring

Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessica Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber, and more.

Plot

A drama about a reformed cat burglar who is being framed for a recent set of jewelry heists and a woman who wants to set her own trap for him.

The Review

Alfred Hitchcock is a renowned film maker and one to truly be admired. He had a way of taking the ordinary and turning it into something more and To Catch A Thief is no exception.

The film itself takes place in the French Riviera with lots of beautiful scenery. I especially found myself drawn to the many symbolisms used throughout the film. Especially the opening of the film where a black cat walks the roof tops of France before and after every burglary—as if symbolizing the cat burglar’s return.

While I’d like to tell you to purchase this collection on the merits of the film itself, I would be doing you a disservice to do so. While the film could certainly stand on its own merits, the bonus disc offers a lot of valuable and entertaining information; especially for Alfred Hitchcock buffs and film students. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that both the film and the bonus features should be required viewing for all film students.

The bonus features include: A Night with the Hitchcocks: The daughter and grand-daughter, Unacceptable Under The Code, The Making of To Catch A Thief, Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, An Appreciation, The Paramount Years, Travelogue, Original Theatre, Gallery stills and clips of home movies. The one thing missing from this grouping would be actual interviews with Hitchcock himself.

Unacceptable Under The Code is about film censorship in America and how Alfred Hitchcock would put outrageous stuff in his scripts just so that when he went into negotiations with the censorship committee he could negotiate the stuff he didn’t want out of the film and negotiate the stuff he did want into the film—things he believed were necessary to make the film work. It also talks about how many rewrites a film went through in order to produce a film that passed censorship and still provided a good, strong storyline that was also entertaining and how because of the censorship, Hitchcock had to use “clever storytelling that created subtext” which made the film far more entertaining than being blatant about the whole sexually explicit content or murders.

You’ll also discover that Hitchcock liked to give his audience time to relax before the next suspenseful part of the film took place; that’s why many of his films included “screwball comedic antics” and “dry sense of humor” scenes.

As for the film itself, it’s about one man’s desire to clear his name and a woman’s desire to catch a thief—to have him fall in love with her.

It all begins with Robie, an American who fought during the Resistance and made his living as a jewelry thief. He’s been framed and is suspected of returning to a life of crime. After dodging the police, he seeks the help of an old friend who acts as though Robie’s lying but when the police arrive, he protects Robie by sending him out the back with his daughter—a daughter who just so happens to be very interested in Robie’s old line of work. Shrugging it off as a young girl’s curiosity gone wild, Robie says goodbye and begins a plan to clear his name.

Later, Robie befriends the area’s insurance agent, Mr. Hughson, and manages to get a list of the wealthiest jewelry clients in the area, along with their habits and schedules. In exchange, he’ll find the cat burglar and return any stolen jewels—for a profit, of course.

However, there’s just one small glitch, his first “bait” to lure the new cat burglar out of hiding turns out to be a rich millionaire with a beautiful, sultry daughter, by the name of Frances Stevens. And Frances has an agenda all her own—to get her claws into Robie.

The rest of the film is about Robie’s concentrated efforts to catch the jewel thief and clear his name, and Frances' game of “cat and mouse” as she works her feminine magic on Robie’s heart.

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