To Catch a Thief Delivers Charming & Easygoing Caper Antics

Alfred Hitchcock is well-known for delivering movies that chill you to the bone. Sequences in his filmography like the shower scene in Psycho, for instance, are iconic for their power of utterly terrifying viewers. This makes his 1955 motion picture To Catch a Thief an interesting oddity in his catalog of work. What we have here is a feature that has brief flashes of being a thriller but primarily prides itself on being an easygoing romantic heist movie. Yes, I said easygoing. That's not a word you'd normally associate with the works of Hitchcock, which typically are extremely intense pieces of cinema. Like I said, To Catch a Thief is an interesting oddity in Hitchcock's resume.

Hepburn and Grant's Cinematic Partnership Kicked off in Style With Sylvia Scarlett

Sometimes, box office duds come up short at the box office simply because they're outright terrible cinema. It's hard to imagine any scenario where Battlefield: Earth or The Adventures of Pluto Nash would resonate with the public deeply enough to make big box office bucks. But more often than not, good movies are the ones that end up perishing at the box office while the likes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen rack up over $400 million domestically. Thankfully, good movies that come up short financially can end up garnering a better reputation over time. Take Sylvia Scarlett for instance, a 1935 comedy that ended up flopping at the box office despite being an immensely important movie historically since it was the first time director George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant all worked together (Cukor and Hepburn had previously collaborated sans Grant on Little Women).

Go On An Endlessly Charming Holiday With Katharine Hepburn And Cary Grant

Just like musicals, superhero movies, Muppet movies and documentaries about classic cinema legends, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant movies just make me ever so happy. Few actors have ever had such rich chemistry as these two, Grant and Hepburn just had such a natural rhythm together that made the sight of them doing something as simple as exchanging small-talk a riveting sight to behold. Best of all, their dynamics didn't leave Hepburn on the side as an object for Grant to covet, in the likes of The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby, Hepburn gets to go toe-to-toe with and even overpower Geant in their interactions, which is just perfect for a performer like Hepburn whose got spunk for days.

His Girl Friday Is A Charming Screwball Comedy Up Until Its Crummy Ending

Though there are a large amount of comedy sequels out there, especially in the modern-day cinematic landscape, for much of history, when a comedy has ended up being successful, Hollywood's de riguer was to simply assemble the leading actor of that comedy and possibly also it's direct and have them pair off again for another separate adventure that was similar in tone and style to what had come before it. Thus, Howard Hawks & Cary Grant re-teamed for another screwball comedy called His Girl Friday in 1940 after their 1938 effort Bringing Up Baby, which didn't perform as well at the box office as producers wanted but it had definitely proved that Hawks & Grant were a combo that worked well together.

Bringing Up Baby Is A Highly Entertaining Comedy, Screwball Or Otherwise

The screwball comedy was as prominent a fixture of movie screens in the 1930's as knock-off's of Porky's were in the 1980's or knock-off's of The Hangover were right after that Todd Phillips movie hit it big at the box office. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" as they say and whenever a big comedy strikes gold at the box office, there's bound to be successive movies all too happy to flatter that successful project by way of mimicry. Is it any surprise then that we had a lot of screwball comedies competing for eyeballs during the 1930's given how many of them were turning out to be true blue moneymakers?

Mo' Thrills Lead To Mo' Problems In Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

There's a reason Alfred Hitchcock's become known as "The Master of Suspense" but it'd be disingenuous to believe that he only worked on horror fare like Psycho and The Birds in his career. Just as John Ford didn't just do Westerns or Martin Scorsese hasn't done solely gangster movies, Hitchcock also had more variety in terms of the genres he explored than one might expect. For instance, he was very well-versed in the world of spy thrillers, most notably in his movies like North By Northwest and the subject of this review, Notorious, a 1946 feature film that paired the director with a trio of legendary 1940's actors; Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains!

North By Northwest Review (Classic Write-Up)

It's practically become a custom for modern spy movies to incorporate the plot thread of a normal person (typically the lead character) getting wrapped up in spy shenanigans to sometimes humorous, other times dramatic, effect. Just look at offerings from 2010 onward like Cars 2, Killers, Bridge Of Spies, Argo, Abduction and (kinda) Salt. It's easy to see why this storytelling device is utilized frequently since it allows for the lead character to engage in high-concept spy going-ons while also being the type of everyday individual the audience can immediately relate to. Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock could be considered a "hipster" in this one case, since he was utilizing that plot scenario "before it was cool" way back in 1959 with his (rightfully) acclaimed motion picture North By Northwest.