Region 1 Paramount (USA)
NTSC, 1.78:1 16x9 enhanced
106 minutes
Audio: DD 2.0 surround English, DD 2.0 mono English, DD 2.0 mono French, DD 2.0 mono Spanish
Subtitles: Optional English, French, Spanish
Extras: audio commentary by Dr. Drew Casper; A Night With the Hitchcocks; Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America; Writing and Casting To Catch a Thief; The Making of To Catch a Thief; Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly; Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch a Thief: An Appreciation; Edith Head: The Paramount Years; If You Love To Catch a Thief; theatrical trailer; stills galleries
Released: 24 March 2009
Paramount Pictures is re-releasing some of its beloved catalog titles in new Centennial Collection editions to celebrate the studio’s 100th birthday. To Catch a Thief carries the Number 6 on its spine.
If a viewer’s first brush with Alfred Hitchcock is To Catch a Thief, then he/she may be left wondering about all the fuss concerning the “master of suspense”. To Catch a Thief offers slick entertainment, but ultimately, it yields little that satisfies.
In the movie (based on a novel by David Dodge), a rash of jewel thefts in and around Cannes in southern France leads the police to think that John Robie (Cary Grant), aka “The Cat”, has taken to his roof-climbing ways again. However, Robie hasn’t stolen anything in 15 years, so he allies himself with an insurance agent in order to catch the real thief. Robie also decides to use the American heiress Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly) as bait. Robie and Stevens fall in love, but even she thinks that he’s the burglar.
The film´s title refers to both Robie’s quest to catch the real thief as well as to Stevens’s seduction of Robie. However, despite the parallel plots unfolding simultaneously, you might be surprised to find that there’s little that happens in To Catch a Thief that could sustain a feature-length narrative. Robie never seems to be actually trying to catch the new “cat”, nor is there any sense of urgency in the pacing. The last act, which takes place at an elaborate costume ball, takes much too long to unfold. The denouement is both obvious and arbitrary.
To Catch a Thief also suffers from never maintaining a consistent point-of-view. Sometimes, we see the story from Robie’s perspective. As the film progresses, the audience is shoe-horned into Stevens’s understanding of events. Just when we have become accustomed to seeing things from one limited angle, the movie lifts us to the position of third person omniscient observers. Since the kind of information that the viewer receives from the movie is inconsistent, I got the sense that Hitchcock was cheating in order to keep the audience guessing about the outcome.
The best way to enjoy To Catch a Thief may be to focus on little touches such as shots of a black cat skittering across tiled rooftops, Grace Kelly’s gorgeous costumes (designed by the legendary Edith Head), and the French-ness of the production. (There are numerous passages with characters speaking only French.) There are the usual Hitchcock-ian touches, from a cameo by the director to the “an innocent man being wronged” theme, from height fetishes to food fetishes, from stunning ice queens to stunning settings.
Video:
This is Paramount’s third try with To Catch a Thief on DVD. The first DVD looked very muddy, and the second DVD had excessively-saturated colors. This time around, the 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen image finally looks “right”. Colors are far more muted than what you got with the second DVD, though the palette is naturalistic and not faded as with other pre-1990s’ movies. Detail and sharpness are fairly high for a standard-definition transfer (undoubtedly aided by VistaVision’s inherent “resolution” compared to regular 35mm photography).
Audio:
The DD 2.0 surround English track is basically a boosted version of the original mono mix. The audio exhibits little hiss, and the actors’ voices aren’t thin or hollow. The music sounds pleasing enough, though I would guess that Hitchcock presciently avoided music that would tax the audio technologies of his day. Expect a front-heavy aural experience.
Extras:
--Disc 1--
Disc 1 offers an audio commentary by Dr. Drew Casper, a film historian who specializes in Hitchcock studies. Dr. Casper prepared for his turn at bat with meticulous notes and presents the information as a casual lecture, which makes sense considering that he teaches in a university. (This commentary replaces the one by Peter Bogdanovich and Laurent Bouzereau for the previous “Special Collector’s Edition”.)
--Disc 2--
“A Night With the Hitchcocks” is a condensed recording of a recent appearance by Hitchcock’s daughter and granddaughter at a university lecture, where they answered students’ questions about their famous forebear.
“Unacceptable Under the Code: Film Censorship in America” details the back-and-forth that filmmakers had with censorship boards as well as Hitchcock’s way of dealing with the situation. Basically, he wrote outrageous, completely unacceptable scenes that he never intended to shoot anyway. By the time that the script had been whittled down to something acceptable by the censors, Hitchcock had already pushed the boundaries beyond what his contemporaries dared to show.
“Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly” is a brief celebration of two icons.
“Writing and Casting To Catch a Thief”, “The Making of To Catch a Thief”, and “Alfred Hitchcock and To Catch a Thief: An Appreciation” are self-explanatory, though I appreciated the candor expressed by the interviewees.
“Edith Head: The Paramount Years” devotes a couple of minutes to one of the most successful costume designers in Hollywood history. Edith Head won 8 Oscars for creating beautiful gowns that draped the shoulders of Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and other actresses. (This featurette has appeared on several Paramount DVDs.)
“If You Love To Catch a Thief” is an interactive guide to some of the movie’s locations.
Finally, you get a theatrical trailer and several stills galleries.
--Miscellaneous--
The discs are kept in a slim double keepcase. You also get a booklet and a cardboard slipcover.
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