To Catch a Thief

A beautiful if underwhelming film, Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief marked the director’s third and final picture starring Grace Kelly. Joining the actress is another actor in his third Hitchcock movie, Carey Grant. Grant plays John Robie, a once jewel thief turned French Resistance fighter who now retired, tends to his vineyards high above the Côte d'Azur. When a series of robberies which display Robie’s hallmarks are committed, the police come looking for the man known as ‘The Cat’ and in order to clear his name, he gets hold of a list of potential targets in the hope of out witting and out manoeuvring the real thief. First on the list are Mrs. Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her daughter Francie (Kelly).

To Catch a Thief lacks some of the dramatic tension and edge of the seat thrills of Hitchcock’s finest films but what it lacks in tautness, it makes up for in other ways. Hitchcock cleverly gets passed the Hays/Breen censors with some fantastic sexual innuendo and half hidden imagery. The romantic side of the plot is much more developed than the dramatic side and Hitch wows his audience with sexual fireworks (literally) and a John Michael Hays script which while leaving little to the imagination, somehow feels clean and moral. Coupled with the spectacular beauty on display, this is a movie which is worth investing time in.

Sabrina

Sabrina is a fairytale love story set around themes of rivalry and class. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is a chauffer’s daughter, living on a large Long Island Estate. For some time she’s been in love with the rich and careless David Larrabee (William Holden) who barely notices her. After two years studying in Paris, the grownup Sabrina returns a beautiful and sophisticated woman and David falls in love. The couple’s relationship threatens to derail a big merger for the family company so David’s brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) decides to woo the girl himself before packing her back off to Paris.

This film is one of several in my girlfriend’s DVD collection that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while. Hepburn is her favourite actress but it was Sabrina I chose over other films because of the male stars. I’ll happily watch anything Bogart and Holden are in but have to say that I was a little disappointed with this film. The stars failed to gel on screen and a little reading tells me that Bogart was unhappy for the duration of the shoot with both director Billy Wilder and his co-star Hepburn who he believed needed too many takes to get her dialogue right. There was better chemistry between Holden and Hepburn which isn’t surprising as the two began a brief affair while shooting the movie.

Dial M for Murder

A classic Hitchcock mystery thriller, Dial M for Murder was released in the same year as Rear Window but isn’t as well known and didn’t make as much money as the latter film. The movie threads themes of mystery, betrayal and most notably the search for the perfect murder, a theme which permeates much of Hitchcock’s work but most notably Rope, Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt. The plot centres around a London flat where a husband, Tony Wendice (Ray Milland) blackmails a former college acquaintance (Anthony Dawson) into murdering his Wife (Grace Kelly) who he believes is having an affair with an American crime novelist (Robert Cummings). Wendice plans the perfect murder but when things go wrong he is quick to think and finds another way of dispatching of his wife.

Like the majority of the dozen or so Hitchcock films I’ve seen so far, Dial M for Murder is very good. Although it is no Psycho or Rope it is a well above average mystery film which features a terrific plot and some decent performances.