![]() ![]() Grace Kelly, in her final Hitchcock film, is miles more appealing here than she was in High Society just a year later, marrying timeless elegance to a playful and mischievous streak. To Catch A Thief also benefits from the luminous nature of its two leading players. ![]() The result is an effective and diverting little chase with a nice punchline: after risky driving and almost running over an old woman, the police are finally undone by poultry, in a droll take on the old 'why did the chicken cross the road?' gag. Hitchcock gets around this through very clever editing and plenty of coverage he gives us the back projection for a sense of time passing, but intersperses it with cuts of the car interior, to Grant's legs, or the wheel on the road, or even the following car, to keep it physical. No, this technique would look very dated the chase involving Sean Connery's blue Sunbeam Alpine showcased its limitations and undercut the tension it was trying to generate. Only a few years later, when Terence Young used it in Dr. This is even true of the driving scenes, despite the use of back projection. Burks deserved his Oscar for his work here, and it's part of the reason the film still holds up today. Where Marnie and Rear Window drew out the red from their situations, this film is built around different shades of blue, from the coolness of the sea to the near-regal fashions of the characters. The two clearly compliment each other, with Hitchcock's editing skill and shot composition being congruous with Burks' sumptuous colour palette and superb vistas. Robert Burks worked with Hitchcock a lot during his Hollywood period, shooting Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and Marnie among others. You get the impression that Hitch almost doesn't care about the final reveal while its production is immaculate, the pacing is somewhat hurried, as if the director was drawing attention to how much of a confection the story is.Įven by the general standards of 1950s Technicolor, To Catch A Thief looks great. When I reviewed The Lady Vanishes (one of Hitchcock's last films made in Britain), I spoke about his "underlying interest in technique over content: his concern was never with what the story is about, as with how was the best way to tell it." Both films find him applying this principle in different ways The Lady Vanishes altered a lot of the plot and character details from Ethel Lina White's novel The Wheel Spins, while To Catch A Thief breezes through its plot, keeping the pace up sometimes at the expense of character development. You could hardly call it his most suspenseful work, or his most accomplished, or even his most interesting - but after more than 60 years it still holds up well and remains very entertaining. Armed with a brace of glamorous leads and a range of opulent locations, he takes a simple premise and carries us on a wave of light-hearted mischief throughout the film's running time. To Catch A Thief fits firmly into the latter category, being an example of Hitchcock having fun, pure and simple. His astounding technical skill, coupled with his burgeoning reputation and ability to attract big-name stars, would produce some of the most iconic films of the mid-20th century, from obsessive character studies like Vertigo and Strangers on a Train to gripping thrill-rides like North by Northwest. Selznick, he was finally free to make the films he wanted to make, exactly the way he wanted to make them. Having been freed from the shackles of his early work in Hollywood, including his tempestuous run with David O. The 1950s found Alfred Hitchcock in his prime. ![]()
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