To Catch a Thief
by Alfred Hitchcock
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John WilliamsDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
Writer: John Michael Hayes
Writer: David Dodge
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-11-05
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of To Catch a Thief
Movie Review: A Finely Crafted Gem
Summary: 5 Stars
What may be considered a minor work for Hitchcock, "To Catch A Thief" would be considered a great film if directed by anyone else. This little jewel from Monaco is in fact a great film, which has been overshadowed by its less glamorous siblings such as "North By Northwest".
As retired jewel thief John Robie "The Cat" Cary Grant is every inch a study in grace, strength and agility in all areas of his life, be it eluding the French police to escaping the finely set trap of Pacific Northwest Heiress Grace Kelly. He is as always the perfect image of a movie star and brings with him all the charm and style we expect from Cary Grant, but just beneath the surface there is something else. John Robie is someone who is hiding the real man he used to be submerged below the smooth glamour of his post war persona. He is very like the Cockney Archie Leach that lived buried deep below the skin of Cary Grant. This makes his performance all the more complex and compelling to watch. The duality of the star mirrors the duality of the character.
Grace Kelly is of course the perfection of all the blonde, icy hot, impossibly smart and beautiful objects of the Hitchcock world. But she two is hiding something in her performance in this film as she did all of her films. Just like Grant she is an imposter hiding behind a movie star. It is all in her voice, that beautiful upper mid Atlantic accent that no one else in her Philadelphia background shares. Her Frances Stevens is from the Northwest but by way of Bryn Mawr or Wellesley she has eradicated her past almost as well as Robie The Cat. Almost, that is except for the presence on this trip to the south of France of her bejeweled and earthy Mother.
Thus in the high and rarefied atmosphere of Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo, these two imposters meet and are drawn by mutual understanding and attraction into a perfect little Hitchcock mystery. To watch these two unearthly beautiful actors as they move through the hotels, beaches and villas of the area is to watch perfection in every sense of divine fakery and double sided joy of their beauty and talent.
Jesse Royce Landis appears as Kelly's mother and with only a few words and a look nearly steals the picture. She is the only person in the story who is not hiding who she really is and in so doing is the comic center of not only the jewel thief's attentions but the pictures as well. She is the hook upon which the crook hangs.
The screenplay by John Michael Hayes who also wrote such varied fair as "Butterfield-8", "Peyton Place" and "Rear Window" here in this work comes up with some of the most clever lines and double entendre in the genre:
John Robie: Say something nice to her, Danielle.
Danielle: She looks a lot older up close.
Frances: To a mere child, anything over twenty might seem old.
The dialog is funny and full of delirious wit and a little wisdom as well.
Just like the two main characters in the film, "To Catch A Thief" is a great film hiding behind the mask of it's reputation as one of it's genius director's lesser efforts, don't buy it for a second. It is first-rate entertainment and not a paste imitation among the jewels of Hitchcock's repertoire. A finely crafted gem.
Summary of To Catch a Thief
A RETIRED CAT BURGLAR SEES FIREWORKS WITH AN AMERICAN HEIRESS ON THE RIVIERA.This minor 1955 work by Alfred Hitchcock, one of the lighter entries of his creative peak in the 1950s, is still imbued with the master's stock themes of shared guilt and romantic ambivalence. It is also hardly lacking in Hitchcockian cinematic inventiveness, such as a famous, often-imitated sequence in which some smooching between stars Cary Grant and Grace Kelly is intercut with a fireworks show that just happens to be going on outside in a Riviera setting. Grant plays a reformed cat burglar who is suspected of reviving his trade, though he knows someone else is using his old methods. A very enjoyable experience, but don't get this confused with Hitchcock's other Cary Grant film of that decade, which was a masterpiece: North by Northwest. --Tom Keogh
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