To Catch a Thief




You don't have to spend every day of your life proving your honesty, but I do.

In the midst of Hitchcock's hey day, he took a break off the serious stuff for a stroll through France, pairing his new favorite actress with Cary Grant.

After a series of high profile burglaries in the Rivera, all bearing his distinctive mark, John Robie (Cary Grant) is forced to flee from the police. Before the war he was a notorious thief, but he's reformed now and wrongly accused of the new spree. To clear his name he decides it is best if he catches the real thief in the act. He doesn't plan, however, on falling for the rich daughter, Frances (Grace Kelly), of one the cases he's supposed to be watching.

It's a fluffy little jaunt through some pretty scenery with Hitch's practiced eye as a guide. To Catch a Thief earned an Oscar for its cinematography for good reason with the beautiful if slightly unoriginal sweeps of the French Rivera. There's also a costume party that heavily features some extravagant dresses. Some issues (though probably just mine personally) crop up with the excessive fading in and out between shots, which gets annoying. It's also fairly difficult to get excited about much of anything until well into the movie when things finally start to move between John and Frances. In the meantime John throws out some witty banter, but the rest of the film is a halfhearted attempt at turncoat thrills that never really impress. When the romance does finally blossom it's pleasant, but barely worth waiting half a movie for. Hitch has some fun with suggestion, but otherwise the film is a change up running on autopilot.

The cast is more or less present to look good. Grant is suave as always, but he looks almost every bit like the half century he was clocking in at the time. Maybe it's Grace Kelly's effect on him. Either way it's hard to really care about either of them ('specially since Kelly is even more aloof than usual), as the thought that anything but the projected happy ending never even comes to mind. Both stars are merely skating by on their charm, much in the same way Hitch is doing. The rest of the cast is varied but not particularly interesting either.

For those that don't have a particularly keen eye for scenery, there's not much to be had, though by the end it mostly makes up for lost ground. This is one of those metaphoric breaths between masterpieces.



-The Gnome