to catch a husband
by Douglas Messerli
John Michael Hayes
(screenplay), Alec Coppel (contributing writer, uncredited), Alfred Hitchcock
(director) To Catch a Thief / 1955
With the recent
multi-million jewelry robbery at Cannes—at the Carlton Intercontinental, the
very hotel featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 movie, To Catch a Thief—I
determined to revisit that film, which I have seen many times in my life.
The
general feeling about this film is that it is nothing but a light
entertainment, a romantic caper that has little, if any depth. And, indeed,
that is, for the most part, the obvious way to read Hitchcock’s early work,
particularly in light of the far greater and complex works such as Shadow
of a Doubt of 1943 and his deft cinema of only the year before, Rear
Window. Yet, there are far deeper issues at play just underneath its witty
script and the tourist-like documentary of its surface.
Part
of the problem is that the plot, such as it is, is centered upon a very weak
conceit: several former jewel thieves, mostly working separately, came together
during World War II to work for the underground, earning pardons from their
numerous post-war crimes in return for their commitment to live crime-free
lives. Some of them, such as the noted “Cat” John Robie (Cary Grant) have ended
up quite well off, he living in a lovely stone house above the Riviera, tended
by a loyal servant, where he grows grapes in his vineyard, and tends to other
garden plants. A former crime friend, Bertani (Charles Vanel), now owns a posh
restaurant serving up meals to wealthy tourists, with another former thief,
Foussard (Jean Martinelli), working as his restaurant assistant. Others,
now serving in the restaurant’s kitchen, have made little financial progress in
their lives, despite their straight living, and are still quite bitter about
the apparent class differences. More importantly, someone has again begun to
steal from Cannes’ wealthy visitors, using the same methods of the famed Robie;
both the police and his former friends suspect he has gone back into business.
Realizing
his predicament of having every day to prove his honesty, Robie decides to go
“under cover” in order to find out just who is the “copycat.” In truth, any
suspense about who is the actual thief, hardly matters. What Hitchcock slowly
reveals to us is that almost anyone and everyone of the film’s numerous figures
might as well be thieves, from H. H. Hughson (John Williams), the insurance
agent whose company has insured most of the jewelry, and has no problem about
stealing soap and towels from various hotels and deducting free meals from his
expense account, to Foussard’s daughter, still in love with the dashing
Robie—who has taught her English—and is perfectly willing to run away with him
to South America. Nearly all of his old associates are equally suspects.
Although
we know they are not guilty of the crimes, we might equally be tempted to call
the two American women, Jessie Stevens (the wonderful Jessie Royce Landis) and
her
beautiful daughter,
Frances (Grace Kelly) as being thieves themselves, one the wife of a wonderful
American rogue on whose Oklahoma land oil was discovered, while her daughter,
whom she declares was “finished” in finishing school, is on the hunt for a wealthy
husband, and, quickly seeing behind Robie’s cover as an Oregon lumberman, is
only too ready to become the “cat’s” new “kitten.” Even Robie’s servant has
once strangled a German with her bare hands. In short, there is not a single
character in this “comedy” who is entirely admirable, which is, in part, what
makes it more fun and more complex as a work of cinema than it first appears.
Each character wants more out of life than he currently has—except, perhaps for
Robie, who admits:
Why
did I take up stealing? To live better, to own things
I
couldn’t afford, to acquire this good taste that you now
enjoy
and which I should be very reluctant to give up.
The
world of To Catch a Thief is less interested in finding the
thief behind the recent jewel heists than it is in acquiring the good things of
life and, in the case of the authorities, of saving face. And everyone in this
film, as Hitchcock makes clear, is only too ready to “gamble” :
Frances
Stevens: Maybe Mr. Houston doesn’t care for
gambling.
Jessie
Stevens: Everyone likes to gamble in one way or
another,
even you!
Frances
Stevens: I have an intense dislike for it.
Jessie
Stevens: Francie, dear, when the stakes are right,
you’ll
gamble!
And gamble she does, high-jacking Robie as
he attempts to check out wealthy and jewel-rich families, offering up a chicken
picnic:
Jessie
Stevens: You want a leg or a breast?
John
Robie: You make the choice.
Taunting Robie with her own diamond
necklace (which he immediately recognizes as an imitation), she offers herself
up to him in a verbally rich fusillade of sexually suggestive
comments—recoiling only in this consumer-based paradise when the “cat” steals
her own mother’s diamonds! Hitchcock’s women, apparently, are all ready to
gamble as long it isn’t the family jewels. Only her utterly down-to-earth and
honest mother admits she does not miss the baubles—as long as they’re insured!
Despite
Francie’s new disdain of her “Robin Hood” hero, she is still willing to play
along in one final caper, in which Hitchcock again reveals not only the
consumerism (Kelly dressed in a gold bullion gown), but the complete sexual
surrender that goes along with such societal behavior, demonstrated in his
wonderful after party scenes at the mansion, where the variously costumed
attendees are portrayed as if mimicking some Hollywood version of “The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
Once
more the bisexual Grant as Robie, as in so many of his films, brushes off
almost all of Francie’s sexual advances:
Frances
Stevens: I’m in love with you.
John
Robie: Now that’s a ridiculous thing to say.
And
throughout Robie seems more comfortable with the British insurance agent, who
he quickly invites up to his bachelor lair than with the American female
beauty. Indeed at the fancy costume party where they finally hope to catch the
thief, the fussy Brit actually becomes Robie's double—what else but a Nubian
slave serving the gold-digging Yankees, as Robie stalks the rooftop in
wait of his cat bandit, as far away as he can get from Francie's domestic
treacheries.
Time and again, he defuses
Francie’s sexual swoons, moving throughout the film in a calm demeanor against
her and Danielle’s sexual insinuations. In this work, more than in almost any
other of his career, Grant’s self-conscious bemusement and seeming absence of
sexuality makes him even more attractive to anyone who might be drawn to his
beautiful exterior. Everyone knows he’s ripe for the taking, except himself.
And his final capture of the new “cat,” Foussard’s daughter Danielle, suggests
his own emasculation: he has been quite successfully replaced by a female
protégé.
Hitchcock
culminates his consumerist satire with the final purchase, Francie rushing up
to Robie’s lair immediately after his innocence is confirmed, insisting, just
as had Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey years before, her
purchase of a new world: “So this is where you live? Oh, Mother will love it up
here?”
Los Angeles, July 31, 2013
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (July 2013).
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