To Catch a Thief

 Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 To Catch a Thief is, in effect, a film noir, something disguised by the movie's luscious technicolor and gorgeous setting on the French Riviera.  The elements of film noir are all in place:  an emotionally detached war veteran is framed for a series of crimes.  Other members of his military unit, a terrorist group of Resistance fighters, suspect the veteran and believe that he has betrayed them.  An icy femme fatale intervenes and the ex-soldier is persuaded to use the woman's gems as bait to lure the real villain into a trap.  Someone gets killed in mysterious circumstances and, after a funeral, the plan to entrap the thief is implemented at a somewhat grotesque costume party.  There's a rooftop chase and the thief (who turns out to be another femme fatale) is captured.  There's even a cynical insurance adjuster, an Englishman from Lloyd's of London who has insured the purloined jewels; he plays the part of the insurance adjuster in Double Indemnity.  The story is circuitous, designed for thrilling set pieces, and, on reflection, doesn't make much sense.  The fantastically beautiful locations near Nice, France obscure the noir elements to the movie and, of course, the sheer star power of Cary Grant as the retired cat burglar and Grace Kelly as one of the film's several scheming women elevate the film beyond its premises.  In many respects, To Catch a Thief is also a warm-up for the 1958 picture, North by Northwest also starring Cary Grant in a love affair with another of Hitchcock's icy blondes (in the later film, Eva Marie Saint); Cary Grant is framed for a crime in North by Northwest as well, gets buzzed by an airplane as in To Catch a Thief, and both movies end with aerial escapades, a woman dangling off the lofty roof of French villa in To Catch a Thief and the famous climax on Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest in which Cary Grant hauls the heroine who has almost plunged to her depth out of the abyss below the four frowning faces on the mountain.  (The rooftop scenes in To Catch a Thief, shot in eerie empty frames with analytical compositions showing tiles with sentinel chimneys and other HVAC doodads studding the steep, raking defiles of slate shingle also invoke the opening chase sequence in Vertigo.)  All of these films feature "adult" dialogue bristling with double-entendre and the sexual subtext in these films is always eccentric if not perverse.  

Hitchcock's spectacular locations in To Catch a Thief are undercut by his careless use of rear-projection.  The illusion that the film was made on the French Riviera is continuously and, rather capriciously, controverted by the unconvincing process photography.  Spectacular aerial shots of car chases on serpentine and deadly-looking mountain roads high above the Mediterranean are intercut with lazy rear projections scenes in which Cary Grant and Princess Grace engage in witty flirtatious dialogue while the landscape on the screen behind them slides by, garments and hair distressed only slightly by an off-screen fan.  Scenes set at the Riviera beach on the sea under ramparts of gorgeous mountains are similarly unpersuasive.  Hitchcock signifies that he really couldn't care less about the spectacular French locations and that, in fact, the vistas of mountain and gleaming sea are a bit tawdry and meretricious, like the gems that glisten on the superb bosoms of his leading ladies -- his real interest lies in the sexual byplay between his characters and their rather abstract, theoretical glamor.  In every respect, the film is perverse: an egg gets pitched at Cary Grant and makes a nasty mess on a window next to his head; later, a socialite stubs out a cigarette on an egg fried sunny-side-up.  There are two car chases but, in both cases, the drivers eluding their pursuers are women; in one of these chases, Cary Grant is along literally for the ride -- we see him anxiously kneading his knees as Grace Kelly blithely zooms around hairpin curves with a drop-off of about 2000 feet six inches from her tires.  (Princess Grace died in a crash as she was driving on one of these mountain roads in 1982.)  A poster proclaims that "If you love life, you'll love Nice!" followed by a jump cut to a woman in close-up screaming at the camera.  Cary Grant's romantic scenes with Grace Kelly are complicated by the fact that the young woman is traveling with her mother, a bawdy dame who is also vividly attractive, and the film suggests much more age-appropriate for a romance with the middle-aged hero than the girl.  (There's another even  younger girl, also a teenager who also pursues the rather passive war hero.)  The object of desire here is Cary Grant, the character whom all three women seem to desire and there's an implication that before the film is over the hero will enjoy the charms of each of them, but again not with intent but, more or less, sleepwalking into their embrace.  Although the scenes between Grant and Kelly have an undoubtable sexual sizzle, there's also obvious chemistry between Grant and Grace Kelly's mother, played with superb aplomb by Jessie Royce Landis; it's a Wife of Bath role and perfectly done.  Indeed, in the film's last line, we learn that the hero's honeymoon with Princess Grace will also involve her mother, suggesting some sort of bizarre menage a trois.  (Hitchcock used Jessie Royce Landis as Cary Grant's mother in North by Northwest in a very similar role; Landis was 59 when To Catch a Thief was made; Grant was 51; Grace Kelly was 26.)  

To Catch a Thief is second-tier Hitchcock; the film contains all of the director's signature obsessions and perverse touches.  But there's nothing here that that the director hasn't done better in some other film.  That said, the picture is very entertaining, a bagatelle, as light and airy as a feather.