During my relatively inattentive viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's TO CATCH A THIEF, as I
breakfasted in bed, I noticed lots of details that I didn't
remember from my last viewing of the film, many years ago...... little
oddities and parallels, and out of place gritty nonpareils in this otherwise
smooth creamy truffle of a movie.....Cary Grant was actually older than Jessie
Royce Landis, yet Landis is treated as an "older woman", whereas Grant is
presented as a 'suitable suitor' for Landis' daughter in the film, Grace
Kelly.....Kelly's character makes snidely impolitic remarks regarding Brigitte
Auber's 'young' character when, in fact, the actresses were practically the
same age.....Double entendres abound, in typical Hitchcock style....after a
high speed elusive car chase.....Kelly driving at breakneck speed (interesting
parallel with her real-life death, incidentally) as Grant nervously rubs his
own thighs....(erotic play in the sexually repressive 1950's)....then stopping
for a 'snack'.....Kelly asking Grant if he'd prefer a leg or breast, as she
offers him a box of fried chicken......I couldn't keep from making a parallel
with the Cannes police department's quickly pinning a crime on a one-legged
man who was innocent.....(how could a peg-legged man scramble over clay-tiled
rooftops, like a cat) and the recent news events in Ferguson?)......reflecting
human's quickness to blame the less desirable, while dismissing the moral
morass of the beautiful and glamorous... and, I can't resist saying that I
thought Edith Head's costumes, on vulgar display at the film's ball on the
Cote d'Azur, didn't deserve an Academy Award, although the popular public
opinion was that she had been 'cheated'......{ahem....weren't Georges Annenkov
(for The Earrings of Madame de... ) and Jean Louis and Christian Dior in the
mix of nominations that year?.....Kelly and Landis look like Vegas showgirls
masquerading as Liberaces in technicolor "Head" drag......I'm certain that the 'AFTERSHOW' will only feature some banter between cast off designers and Christian, being...well...just 'Silly'.....
