Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay by John Michael Hayes adapted from the novel by David Dodge.

Cary Grant – John Robie

Grace Kelly – Frances Stevens

Jessie Royce Landis – Jessie Stevens

John Williams-HH Hughson

Charles Vanel-Bertani

Brigitte Auber – Danielle Foussard

Jean Martinelli-Fossard

Georgette Anys – Germaine

Easily one of the most beautiful and compelling movies ever filmed. It’s no coincidence that Robert Burks won the 1956 Oscar for Best Color Photography. A delight to the eye for a tourism poster of an entertainment. After seeing it, you will also be a fan of the beauty of the French Riviera.

Cary Grant, as John Robie, returns to play a decent and well-meaning guy (despite his background as a notorious cat burglar) who gets caught up in an affair that threatens to land him back in jail.

This time he is suspected of committing the recent series of robberies that have deprived the super-rich of Nice of their precious jewellery. Robie claims his innocence to no avail. He’s still the best suspect the police have. So the French police keep riding his tail. Robie’s only way out is to find the real thief.

Robie accomplishes this by collaborating with insurance agent HH 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 the other Hitchcock classic “North by Northwest” (NBN) in which Cary Grant also starred:

1) In both movies, Grant plays a guy who gets into trouble early on, practically five minutes into the movie.

2) Both movies have that famous scene where a female character is hanging from a high place and Cary Grant grabs her wrist at the last moment and carries her to safety. On NBN, she is the protagonist hanging from the colossal relief of George Washington on Mount Rushmore. In TCT, she is the villain who hangs from the ceiling of Villa de Silva.

3) NBN has the famous scene of the crop duster. In TCT, a similar-looking police plane chases from low altitude the boat in which Grant flees the port of Nice.

4) Jessie Royce Landis, who plays “Jessie Stevens” on TCT, plays Cary Grant’s mother on NBN (even though Grant was ten years older than her). Landis played Grace Kelley’s mother not only on TCT but also in “The Swan” (1956).

5) On NBN, Hitchcock makes his signature appearance by boarding a public bus at a city bus station. In TCT, Hitchcock makes his characteristic appearance by sitting right next to Grant as an anonymous passenger in the last row of a passenger bus traveling the dusty back roads of the French Riviera.

OTHER NOTES:

— This was the last film that Grace Kelly filmed with Hitchcock. Soon after, she married Prince Rainier of Monaco and left the movie business for good. If she hadn’t done that, she definitely would have faced Cary Grant in “North by Northwest.”

— French actor Charles Vanel (as Bertani) couldn’t speak a word of English. All of his lines were dubbed.

— Half of the film (most of the interiors) was shot at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

— The film was shot using PanaVision technology, the main competitor to Cinemascope technology at the time. In PanaVision technology, the film ran horizontally, not vertically.

— Screenwriter John Michael Hayes also wrote that other great Hitchcock classic, “Rear Window (1954).”