9/17/2023 0 Comments To catch a thief blackface![]() Hitchcock does not cheat the spectator whether it is a case of simple dramatic interest or of profound anguish, our curiosity is not compelled by a vagueness about what the threats are. ![]() But André Bazin has pointed out the nature of Hitchcock's relationship to realism: I have read that To Catch a Thief has been criticized for its lack of realism. You may be surprised that I consider To Catch a Thief a pessimistic film, but you have only to listen to Georgie Auld's and Lyn Murray's melancholy music and watch Grant's unusual performance.Īs in Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, Hitchcock's use of Grace Kelly is critical: here she embodies the character of a superb Yankee Marie-Chantal, and she's the one who finally catches Grant by getting him to marry her. This last job, which forces him to use all his skill as a burglar for the ends of a policeman, fills him with nostalgia for action. The protagonist, admirably portrayed by Cary Grant, is disillusioned, finished. It is, of course, a crime story that is designed to make us laugh, but nonetheless Hitchcock's basic idea led him to Jacques Becker's formula in Touchez pas au Grisbi: the thieves are burned out. I mentioned Arsene Lupin before because this new film of Hitchcock's is elegant, humorous, sentimental almost to the point of bitterness, somewhat in the manner of 813 or L'Aiguille Creuse. The framework is different from I Confess or Strangers on a Train, but the basics remain the same and the same relationships bind the characters to each other. ![]() To Catch a Thief is not a black film, nor is there a lot of suspense in it. They are look-alikes and opposites at the same time, so that there is a perfect symmetry throughout the work, a symmetry that carries over to the smallest details in the intrigue. Grant's hair is parted on the right, Auber's on the left. Without wanting to reveal the outcome of To Catch a Thief, I am sure that it is no accident that Brigitte Auber resembles Grant and wears an identical striped jersey: blue-and-white for Grant, red-and-hite for Auber. I have bothered to tell you the story line of To Catch a Thief in such detail to demonstrate that, in spite of appearances, once more Hitchcock remains absolutely faithful to his perennial themes: inter-changeability, the reversed crime, moral and almost physical identification between two human beings. To track down his imitator he employs a dialectic Arsene Lupin would not disavow: 'To unmask the new Cat, I must catch him in the act during his next theft to figure out who his next victim will be (since "he" reasons by imagining himself in "my" place) all I have to do is imagine what I would once have done, or what I would do now if I were in his place that is, in the final analysis, in my own place." Naturally, Robie succeeds. So the ex-Cat decides that the only way to get back his peace and quiet is to unmask the plagiarist burglar who has baffled the police. He falls under suspicion and his retirement and daily routine are disrupted. ![]() His tranquility is soon spoiled by a series of jewel thefts in the great mansions and hotels of the French Riviera, thefts committed by someone as expert as he and in his style. The film finds Robie some years later, when he has completely retired to a villa in Saint-Paul-de-Vence to live in considerable comfort on the profits of his earlier career. He escaped, joined the underground and eventually became a Resistance hero. John Robie ( Cary Grant), an American thief who had worked in France before the war, had such a personal technique that each of his crimes bore his stamp, and he had been dubbed "the Cat" Eventually caught and imprisoned, Robie, when the prison was accidentally bombed, took advantage of the situation. keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, André Bazin, Brigitte Auber, Cary Grant, Dial M for Murder (1954), Grace Kelly, I Confess (1953), Lyn Murray, Rear Window (1954), Strangers on a Train (1951), To Catch a Thief (1955). ![]()
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