June 2007

To Catch a Thief

• Starring: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber
• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Theatrical release: 1955
• DVD release: 2007
• Video: Widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Released by: Paramount

Alfred Hitchcock made more great movies than any other director save John Ford. And though I’ve covered a few over the years, I’ve held off on writing about my favorite -- To Catch a Thief -- because it’s generally considered low-rent Hitchcock, a mere trifle to allow him to get a few sexy shots of Grace Kelly. Even Hitchcock dissed it as "a lightweight story." I disagree.

The film is about two rich, traveling Americans, Frances Stevens (Kelly) and her mother, Jessie (Jessie Royce Landis). The Stevenses are lounging on the Riviera while Jessie hunts for an acceptable husband for her daughter. John Robie (Cary Grant) is a former cat burglar who has retired to live the high life. When expensive jewels start to go missing from extravagant hotel boudoirs, everyone suspects Robie of having come out of retirement. Claiming to be innocent, he sets out to find the real thief. Ergo the title, a play on the mid-17th-century maxim "Set a thief to catch a thief."

As usual in a Hitchcock film, catching the thief is merely a device (Hitchcock called them McGuffins) to carry along the real story: in this case, the use of distrust, ennui, and false bravado as sexual foreplay. If those sound like contradictory terms, you’re right. Hitchcock’s lightweight story isn’t about a cat burglar as much as it’s about the cat-and-mouse game men and women play when they fall in love. Frances and John’s way of circling each other seems more like a knife fight than a love clench, but then, that’s how Hitchcock saw love.

Talking with François Truffaut about To Catch a Thief, Hitchcock said, "Sex on the screen should be suspenseful." If you’ve seen the film before and know how it ends, watch again, and this time don’t worry about the McGuffin. Instead, pay attention to Kelly’s seduction of Grant. Listen to the thrust and parry of the dialogue, laden with double entendres. The Hitchcockian suspense doesn’t come from catching the thief, but from wondering how Kelly will snare Grant.

The sexual banter begins in chapter 10, when the two are driving, in Frances’s Sunbeam Marque Talbot Alpine Roadster, on the Upper Corniche in the South of France -- the same road Kelly died on 27 years later. When Frances and John finally have their big kiss in chapter 13 and fireworks go off in the background, we’re seeing Hitchcock’s wry humor as he winks at the audience. Unlike in his more critically acclaimed films, here Hitchcock isn’t trying to expose human beings’ deep core of fear. This film was his best shot at offering pure entertainment. As Peter Bogdanovich says in the commentary track, it’s almost like being on a nice vacation with Sir Alfred.

Any film lover with the least interest in film history should already have the three big Hitchcock boxed sets, Wrong Men & Notorious Women (Criterion), The Masterpiece Collection (Universal), and The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection (Warner Home Video) -- a total of 25 bona fide film classics (with a few dogs thrown in). The missing gem from these sets is To Catch a Thief. I can only assume that Paramount was holding out. How else could you explain including Hitchcock’s nadir, Topaz, and leaving out his most transparently entertaining film?

This current release, which has Special Collector’s Edition emblazoned across the top, might appear to be a repackaging of Paramount’s 2002 DVD edition, but it’s not. The improvement in picture alone is reason enough to pitch the older version in the trash. Each frame shows improvements in resolution, color timing, and cleanness. This painstaking restoration has made the film look like new. In fact, the quality of the remastered picture is so high that my guess is that the Blu-ray version is already awaiting release.

The other very important addition is the commentary track by director Peter Bogdanovich and author-documentarian Laurent Bouzereau. While Bouzereau occasionally sounds obsequious and Bogdanovich chronically bored, there’s no mistaking the fact that they know what they’re talking about, and often provide riveting insights. The re-used extras will be old hat to anyone who has the boxed sets: family members say what a nice man Hitchcock was, and surviving crew members describe his genius. Seeing these once is plenty.

To Catch a Thief is my favorite Hitchcock film because it’s funny, sexy, lavish, sweet, and, above all, relaxed. Hitchcock’s earlier films are meatier courses -- I wouldn’t want to skip the protein -- but To Catch a Thief is the sort of delectable confection that reminds you why you look forward to dessert.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

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