Year Released: 1955
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, Brigitte Auber
(PG, 106 min.)
Genre: Classic, Mystery and Suspense, Romance

John Robie: You're here in Europe to buy a husband.
Frances Stevens: The man I want doesn't have a price.
John Robie: That eliminates me.

Off to the French Riviera, the celebrated Côte d'Azur, where you can live the good life with handsome and urbane Cary Grant and luminescent Grace Kelly at the zenith of her career.

It’s as buoyant and bubbly as champagne, delicious and thrilling, with Hitchcock at his most relaxed, letting go of the darker elements that usually flavor his cocktail of suspense.

Grace Kelly and Cary Grant romp around the Riviera in Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Cary plays a retired jewel robber, forced to track down another crook after he's accused of a crime he didn't commit. Kelly is the moneyed socialite who falls for him. –Peter Bradshaw

Indeed, at its debut in 1955 some critics were not too happy with this champagne cocktail of a film. In seems they wanted some bitters to enhance the brew.

Britain’s The Monthly Film Bulletin complained that …even a comedy thriller needs considerably more in the way of plain excitement and tension than To Catch a Thief provides, and Hitchcock's celebrated habit of playing tricks with the audience ... seem a poor substitute for the real thing.

While the Guardian really laid into their expatriate master of suspense calling To Catch a Thief “a thorough disappointment.” Hitchcock had, according to them:

…failed so completely that one can only wonder if, in this tale of high-class burglary on the Côte d'Azur, he has not altogether abandoned his devotion to 'tension.' Certainly the 'whodunnit' element in this film is remarkably slack; the unmasking of the master criminal, which is the climax of the story, comes as mildly as bread and milk.

But none can argue with the setting, almost a character itself, and no one denies that Robert Burks deserves his Oscar for Best Cinematography. Especially the way he handles the daring drive around the hairpin curves, a captive Gary Grant holding on for his life with Grace Kelly’s at the wheel. This was before we had real car chases, a la Bullitt or The French Connection. Everything was done with a back projection simulating real driving. But Burk did this exceptionally well:

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. – Daniel M. (Audience Super Reviewer)

Of course, who could miss the irony in that scene, knowing that just 25 years later, Grace Kelly would meet her death on one of those hairpin curves when the car she was driving careened off a 120 foot slope.

And there is also a little more irony in Grace Kelly’s real life circumstance and her role as Frances Stevens, a somewhat pampered daughter of a wealthy nouveau riche widow in Europe “shopping for a husband,” as Cary Grant’s John Robie assesses:

John Robie: You're here in Europe to buy a husband.
Frances Stevens: The man I want doesn't have a price.
John Robie: That eliminates me.

Unlike some of the newly rich, neither Frances nor her outspoken mother Jesse (Jessee Royce Landis) has any pretense. While looking at a large mansion with her, Robie aks her a question.

John Robie: Why don't you own a place like this?
Frances Stevens: Palaces are for royalty. We're just common people with a bank account.

Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier of Monaco the same year and place that To Catch a Thief was made. The starlet came from a wealthy family, but she had working class roots. Her father had started out as a laborer and eventually made a fortune in the bricklaying business in Philadelphia, so, like her character in the film, they never had the status of old money.

Maybe that is why Grace, who, as a child was somewhat overweight, wore glasses and had a “thin, nasal voice from years of sinus problems,” sought out a real prince for her husband once she looked the part of a real princess.

***

In To Catch a Thief Grace Kelly reprises the light banter and artful seduction from Rear Window, which was released a year earlier. There she is a wealthy socialite pulling out all the stops to get Jimmy Stewart to pop the question. While Stewart fields her attentions with a grumpy nonchalance, Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief is perceptive, brusque, and smitten all at once.

And what the film may lack in real typical Hitchcock suspense it makes up for in its witty dialogue, in particular, this scene where Grant is helpless as Grace Kelly appraises and confronts some competition for his affections:

Throw in a few more typical Hitchcock tropes, such as a bumbling and inept police force, a (sort of) innocent man wrongly accused, an icy blonde, at least on the outside, a comical resistance toward marriage, and you have a film as light and airy as a soufflé.

The final scene is pure Hitchcock. It is on the balcony of Cary Grant’s breathtaking mountain retreat, where he seems to succumb to his costar’s charms. The camera closes in on the final kiss. In that last shot we see our retired burglar raise his brow as Grace Kelly delivers her coup de grace.

“Mother will love it here.”

–Kathy Borich
🥁🥁🥁🥁

Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

One of the most fabulous set pieces in To Catch a Thief is the opulent masked ball, where John Robie, the “Cat,” hopes to catch the thief who has been impersonating him. Costume maker icon Edith Head won an Oscar for her work here, and you can relish it in Grace Kelly’s luscious gold lamé gown. If ever a princess came to life, it is Grace Kelly in this gown.

The ball’s buffet is also a delight, and Different Drummer has chosen a specialty from the French Riviera for you to make. And it is not that difficult at all.

Please enjoy this French Rivera Goat’s Cheese Ciabatta.

Bon appétit!

French Riviera Goat’s Cheese Ciabatta

Ingredients

1 large courgette (zucchini), halved and then cut into thin slices
2 tbsp olive oil
1 ciabatta loaf, split down the middle and halved
1 garlic clove, halved
Zest and juice from 1 lemon
3 oz soft goat’s cheese
Small bunch of basil, finely shredded

Directions

1. Drizzle the courgette slices with a little olive oil. Cook on a hot griddle pan (or in a frying pan) for about 2 mins on each side until tender. Toast the ciabatta and gently rub with the cut garlic clove.

2. Whisk together the lemon juice with the remaining oil and some seasoning. Spread the ciabatta with the soft goat’s cheese and top with the courgette slices, a little dressing, the lemon zest and basil. Serve with a salad, if you like.

BBC Good Food.com