“To Catch aThief” (1955)
Hitchcock was the master of elevating genre fare to something more significant through his craft, but “To Catch a Thief” is proof that the director was able to take his skills and make something that’s about nothing but pleasure. And almost nothing in his filmography is as pleasurable as this. An example of a sort of post-“Roman Holiday,” affordable-air-travel era of Hollywood fascination with European glamor, it sees Cary Grant (his third of four collaboration with the director) as John Robie, a former Resistance hero turned retired cat burglar who comes under suspicion after a series of jewel robberies blamed on a thief known as ‘the Cat’ in the South of France. He sets out to clear his name, which involves him keeping an eye on the collections of wealthy American tourist Jessie (Jessie Royce Landis) and her beautiful daughter Francie (Grace Kelly). It’s unshamedly feather-light stuff, but the string of subsequent knock-offs over the year make it clear how incredibly difficult it is to get something like this right. And yet Hitchcock makes it look entirely effortless: the easy, crackling chemistry between Grant and Kelly, the gorgeous VistaVision French Riviera landscapes (which won cinematographer Robert Burks an Oscar), the lean, twisty screenplay, the pitch-perfect editing. This isn’t Hitchcock the auteur at his work, it’s Hitchcock the crowd-pleaser, and while it’s not one of the director’s most significant films, it might be one of his most fun. [B+]
Hitchcock Cameo: Sitting next to Grant on a bus at the 0:10 mark.
“The Trouble with Harry” (1955)
Based on a novel by Jack Trevor Story (who, despite Hitchcock’s daughter assertion on the DVD special features, did not act in Hitchcock’s earlier film “Champagne”), “The Trouble with Harry” concerns the pesky body of one Harry Worp (Phillip Truex), who appears on a grassy knoll in a small town in Vermont. All of the townspeople think that they might have accidentally been responsible for killing Harry and all of them have different views about what to do with his body now that he’s shown up, with the film taking on a kind of buoyant, screwball tone wrapped around a pitch-black comedy. Shirley MacLaine, her hair cut into a “Rosemary’s Baby”-ish bob, is particularly magnetic as Jennifer Rogers, Harry’s bubbly wife and (of course) one of the supposed murderers. As “The Trouble with Harry” goes along, the situations get even more outsized and surreal and you can tell that it was a touchstone for later dark comedies, including Robert Zemeckis’ demented “Death Becomes Her” and (more explicitly) the “Weekend at Bernie’s” films. The film was notable in the Hitchcock canon for being one of his rare commercial flops (and for being largely unavailable afterwards) and also for being his first collaboration with famed composer Bernard Herrmann (a relationship that would continue for almost a decade but end bitterly over the disputed score to “Torn Curtain”). Less than a decade before his death, Hitchcock claimed that “The Trouble with Harry” was his favorite film and it’s easy to see why – the movie is idiosyncratic and totally Hitchcock, full of playful dark humor and gorgeous camerawork. But it also seems more pure and oddly personal. “The Trouble with Harry,” you can tell, comes from a singular point of view that wasn’t as interested in goosing the audience but instead was concerned with presenting something atonal and strange. It wasn’t your average Hitchcock movie. It was better. [A-]
Hitchcock Cameo: At 0:22:14, he walks between the window and the limousine.
“The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956)
Almost as soon as he moved to Hollywood, Hitchcock considered remaking “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” the 1934 film that marked his first big talkie hit; the idea was floated as far back as 1941. In the end, it was the desire to fulfill a contractual obligation to Paramount Pictures that saw the project move forward, with the director telling writer John Michael Hayes (“Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief“) not to watch or read the original, to help differentiate the pair. The set up is basically the same, nevertheless; a vacationing couple (James Stewart and Doris Day, American rather than British, and in Marrakech rather than the Alps) watch their new French pal murdered, and become embroiled in an international assassination plot, only for the villains (a British couple played by Bernard Miles and Brenda De Banzie, subbing in for the original’s Peter Lorre) to kidnap their child (their son, rather than a daughter this time). Hitchcock told Truffaut in 1967 that “the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional,” and technically, certainly, he’s right; the remake sees Hitch at the peak of his skills, the set pieces more gripping, and the filmmaking more inventive. But narratively, we’re not so sure. At nearly 45 minutes longer than the original, the ’56 edition feels baggy where it should be lean, and while Stewart is as good as ever, he and Day feel a little bland compared to Leslie Banks and Edna Best (it doesn’t help that Day’s singing skills are shoehorned inorganically into the plot). It’s all still very entertaining, and it’s fascinating to see the director’s two takes on the same premise, but as far as we’re concerned, there’s a slight case of diminishing returns. [B-]
Hitchcock Cameo: 25 minutes in, his back to camera, watching acrobats in the marketplace.
“The Wrong Man” (1956)
“An innocent man has nothing to fear, remember that,” a police officer intones in Alfred Hitchcock’s minor, but no less masterful “The Wrong Man.” But of course, that adage will be turned completely on its head in the film that could seem unbelieveable, but is based almost beat for beat on a true story. Revisiting a common theme of the ordinary man wrongly accused and caught up way in over his head, it’s the procedural nature and the touchingly vulnerable turn by Henry Fonda that carries the story of mild mannered Manny, a family man and jazz musician struggling to make ends meet. A seemingly innocuous trip to the insurance company to try and borrow money against his wife’s policy turn accusations that he’s the serial thief who held up the office not too long ago. And so begins a Kafka-esque nightmare as he tries to solidify alibis, find witness and just somebody, anybody who can verify and understand he’s not the criminal. Shot on location in New York City, it adds an extra dimension to the humanity Fonda pours on screen — your heart breaks over and over for Manny, whose battle through the legal system takes a toll on the mental health of his wife. Those looking for Hitchcock-ian visual flourishes won’t get them here, but instead it’s a filmmaker who realizes the situation itself is powerful enough all on its on. And combined with a performance by Fonda who brings the innocence — both legally but more crucially emotionally — of Manny to the fore, the greatest suspense and perhaps horror in “The Wrong Man” is drawn from the notion that justice be can blind…even to the innocent. [B+]
Hitchcock Cameo: The only film in which Hitchcock essentially plays himself; he appears in silhouette to deliver the prologue, apparently because he wanted to place an emphasis on the based-in-fact nature of the tale.