If you take away the on location filming on the French Riviera, the excellent cast and cinematography of Robert Burks you have a very lame Hitchcock comedy suspense thriller. What To Catch A Thief has going for it is Cary Grant who has to carry the entire film. When film buffs talk about the effortless charm of Cary Grant, this is a good film to point to.
The screenplay by John Michael Hayes, is pretty weak and seems to mostly be an excuse to film some Hitchcock, set pieces like the scenic car chases in Vista Vision, the fireworks sex scene and the stunning costume ball sequence towards the end of the film. All this is tied together with a weak story about Grant being an ex thief trying to stop a cat burglar stealing jewels from the wealthy. Even Hayes who was a pro at writing good spicy dialog doesn't seem to be on his game.
To Catch A Thief also stars Grace Kelly who was Hitchcock's ultimate blond fantasy fetish. Throughout the film Kelly is presented as a smoldering ice princess ready to pop, look but don't touch. In real life Grace Kelly was known to have had affairs with just about every leading man she worked with, a far cry from Hitchcock's creepy fantasies about her.
Hitchcock apparently had a lot of trouble filming To Catch A Thief. Cary Grant's movie star ego was running amok during the shooting, the French actors struggled with the English dialog, the color photography in Vista Vision was difficult to work with and Hitchcock and John Michael Hayes fought over the screenplay.
Overall it's kind of amazing he was able to pull the whole thing together. To Catch A Thief is a moderately entertaining but not great Hitchcock film.
Grace Kelly does look pretty good.
106 minutes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment