Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by John Michael Hayes adapted from David Dodge's novel.
Cary Grant -- John Robie
Grace Kelly -- Frances Stevens
Jessie Royce Landis -- Jessie Stevens
John Williams -- H. H. Hughson
Charles Vanel -- Bertani
Brigitte Auber -- Danielle Foussard
Jean Martinelli -- Foussard
Georgette Anys Germaine
Easily one of the most gorgeous and good-looking Films ever shot. It's not an accident that it won Robert Burks the 1956 Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color. An eye-candy of a tourism poster of an entertainment. After watching it, you'll also be a fan of the beauty of the French Riviera.
Cary Grant, as John Robie, is again playing a well-meaning decent guy (despite his background as a notorious cat burglar) who finds himself embroiled in an adventure that threatens to put him back in jail.
This time he is suspected to have committed the recent spate of thefts that have parted the supe r-rich of Nice from their precious jewels. Robie claims his innocence to no avail. He is still the best suspect the cops have. So the French police continue to ride his tail. Robie's only way out is to find the real burglar.
Robie accomplishes that by collaborating with the insurance agent H. H. Hughson (played by the prim and proper John Williams who also played the police detective in another Hitchcock-Grace Kelly film Dial M For Murder, 1954).
Five parallels between To Catch a Thief (TCT) and Hitchcock's other classic North by Northwest (NBN) in which Cary Grant has also starred:
1) In both Films Grant is playing a guy who gets into trouble from the get go, practically just five minutes into the movie.
2) Both Films have that famous scene where a female character dangles from a high location and Cary Grant grabs her by the wrist at the last moment and grabs her to safety. In NBN she is the leading lady dangling from the colossal relief of George W ashington at Mount Rushmore. In TCT she is the villain dangling from the roof of Silva's Villa.
3) NBN has the famous crop duster airplane scene. In TCT a similar-looking police airplane pursues from low altitude the boat in which Grant is running away from the Nice harbor.
4) Jessie Royce Landis who plays Jessie Stevens in TCT plays Cary Grant's mother in NBN (although Grant was ten years her senior). Landis played Grace Kelley's mother not only in TCT but in The Swan (1956) as well.
5) In NBN, Hitchcock makes his trademark appearance by stepping on to a public bus at a city bus station. In TCT, Hitchcock makes his trademark appearance by sitting right next to Grant as an anonymous passenger in the back row of a passenger bus traveling on the dusty back roads of French Riviera.
OTHER NOTES:
-- This was the last film Grace Kelly shot with Hitchcock. Soon after, she married Prince Rainier of Monaco and left the movie business for good. If she h adn't done that, she would have definitely cast against Cary Grant in North by Northwest.
-- French actor Charles Vanel (as Bertani) could not speak a word of English. All his lines were dubbed.
-- Half of the movie (most interiors) was shot at Paramount studious in Los Angeles.
-- The film was shot with PanaVision technology, the chief competitor of the Cinemascope technology back then. In PanaVision technology the film ran horizontally, not vertically.
-- ScreenWriter John Michael Hayes also wrote that other great Hitchcock classic, Rear Window (1954).
Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a Creative CopyWriter, Editor, an experienced and award-winning Technical Communicator specializing in fundraising packages, direct sales copy, web content, press releases, movie reviews and hi-tech docum entation. He has worked as a Technical Writer for Fortune 100 companies for the last 7 years.
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Author:: Ugur Akinci
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