To Catch a Thief

To Catch a Thief (1955) 

Notable cast/crew: Cary Grant as John Robie.  This was his third of four Hitchcock films.  Grace Kelly as Frances Stevens.  This was her third and final film with Hitchcock.  Jessie Royce Landis as Jessie Stevens.  She would also appear in North by Northwest.  John Williams as H H Hughson.  This was his third and final Hitchcock film.  Brigitte Auber as Danielle Foussard.  Costumes by Edith Head.

Running time: 106 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: A cat burglar is making the rounds in the French Riviera.  The police suspect John Robie, a hero of the French Resistance and retired thief whose style was similar to the current thefts.  He eludes the police and looks for help among his old friends from the Resistance.  His old comrades think he's up to his old ways, jeopardizing all of their livelihoods.  Robie believes it is someone who knows him because they know all of his old methods.  He resolves to catch thief himself.

Did you just hit a hobo?

Danielle Foussard is the daughter of one of his comrades.  She resents that Robie lives in luxury despite having been a thief while the rest of them have to work for a living.  She argues with him but helps him get away from the police.

Robie enlists the help of H H Hughson, an insurance inspector, to help him figure out who the next target is going to be.  Robie wants to get a step ahead of the thief and catch them to clear his name.

Robie cozies up to the Stevenses, thinking they are the most likely next targets.  They are, and Robie doesn't catch the thief, heaping more suspicion on him.  He sets a final trap at a masquerade ball.  The thief strikes during the ball, but Robie has disguised his exit by switching places with Hughson.  This allows him to get the drop on the thief.  The thief is Danielle Foussard.  She had been working with her father and Robie's old Resistance friends.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: Sitting on the bus next to Cary Grant

Hitchcock themes: 

• Blondes

Verdict: It's an okay film, but it tends to be a bit frivolous.  The scenery is the gorgeous French Riviera, and we spend much of the movie dealing with the Grant-Kelly romance that is superfluous to the plot.

This was Hitchcock's first of five films in the widescreen process VistaVision.  This was Grace Kelly's final film with him. He cast her in Marnie (1964), but by then she was Princess Grace of Monaco.  She withdrew when it became clear that popular opinion disapproved of her making another film.  Ironically, she died in 1982 at age 52 after crashing her vehicle on the same serpentine mountain road as the speeding car sequence in the film's conclusion.

It won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Robert Burks).

French actor Charles Vanel (Bertani) could not speak a word of English.  All of his lines were dubbed.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: The Trouble With Harry