To Catch a Thief (1955)

If ever a movie was a surefire commercial hit it was Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, released by Paramount in 1955.

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were huge stars at the time. Hitchcock had worked with both of them before. He knew they would have the right onscreen chemistry and that Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in love would be box-office gold. He knew the story had all the right ingredients for a lighthearted suspense movie/romance. He knew that that was the sort of thing he could do, and do very well. It could not fail. And it was indeed a major hit.

John Robie (Cary Grant) lives in the south of France. He is a retired cat burglar. Now someone has been pulling off robberies using Robie’s standard modus operandi. The police will obviously believe he is guilty. They do believe he is guilty. Even his friends assume he is guilty.

It’s obvious to Robie that his only chance of proving his innocence is to catch the real cat burglar himself.

He gets hold of a list of women who own very expensive jewels. They’re the mystery cat burglar’s obvious next targets. Robie (who is pretending to be an American lumberman from Oregon) intends to set a trap for the burglar.

One of the women on the list is Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis). She has a daughter, Francie (Grace Kelly). Francis has had the finest education money can buy. She is poised and sophisticated. She’s also a bit of a spoilt brat. She seems to have set her sights on Robie. She doesn’t believe he has ever been anywhere near Oregon. She believes he’s the cat burglar. This excites her (she’s that kind of girl).

They spend the night together. This scene is a great example of Hitchcock making it blindingly obvious that two characters have had sex whilst somehow never quite technically stepping outside the bounds of the Production Code.

While Robie hopes to trap the burglar he has a whole bunch of people out to trap him. There are the police. There are his olds friends from the Resistance. They were all criminals as well. They fear that Robie will cause them problems with the flics. And of course the real cat burglar is out to trap John Robie as well.

The identity of the actual burglar is very obvious but I won’t say any more for fear of revealing spoilers.

To be honest To Catch a Thief, apart from the obviousness of the criminal’s identity, is not a great suspense thriller. It’s more like his wonderful early film Young and Innocent - the real focus is on the romance. It’s a terrific romance movie, and manages to be rather sexy for 1955. There’s plenty of romantic and sexual tension. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly get to trade some very witty very risqué dialogue.

Grace Kelly is superbly dressed and is breathtakingly beautiful and glamorous.

This movie looks gorgeous. The colours are not just stunning, they’re used imaginatively to give a weird other-worldly feel to the strange rooftop world of the professional cat burglar. The sets and costumes are magnificent.

Hitchcock was determined to have as little as possible to do with the deplorable fad for location shooting. Despite the exotic setting the film has that classic shot-on-a-sound-stage look. There are lots of process shots. These are not flaws. Hitchcock did not make movies set in the real world. He made movies set in Hitchcock World, a much more attractive and interesting world. This movie is not supposed to look realistic.

There was one tricky element in the plot. The Production Code was still in force. The movie had to have an unequivocal crime does not pay message. On the other hand to make John Robie an entirely innocent man would be boring and would be a misuse of Cary Grant’s talents. It would be much more fun to make Robie a retired, rather than a reformed, criminal. It would also be much more fun to make him totally unapologetic about his criminal past. Cary Grant had a particular knack for playing likeable rogues and he was at his best playing a character who was a genuine rogue.

The solution was to emphasise over and over again that Robie had fought with the French Resistance during the war. He was a hero who had risked his life for freedom and democracy. As long as it was also made clear that Robie had given up his criminal career Cary Grant could get away with playing him as a man who had enjoyed every moment of his life as a cat burglar. He could also get away with playing Robie as anything but a Robin Hood figure. John Robie did not steal from the rich to give to the poor. He stole from the rich to give to John Robie.

This solution allowed Grant to have some real fun with this role. It also allowed him to be a handsome sexy bad boy.

This is Hitchcock Lite but it's a visually stunning romance movie with Grace Kelly absolutely at the top of her game. Highly recommended.

This movie looks terrific on Blu-Ray - this is one of those rare cases where it really is upgrading to Blu-Ray.