As I’ve exhausted my favorite podcasts I intended to put on an old movie in the background while working. Something dialogue-heavy, something classic, something Cary Grant. I found To Catch A Thief and was surprised to know it was a Hitchcock film.
As background noise, this movie didn’t work well because it’s such a good film in the sense that it keeps to the rule “show, don’t tell.” in the case of exposition. The above still of the cat and the newspaper are great examples, the cat is a visual metaphor for the thief, and the newspaper is explicit narration, but both are silent. Note the connection of the cat and newspaper in both scenes, the cat on top of the newspaper in the one, and the cat scratches dug into the newspaper in the other.
The use of green in this movie is extraordinary. In an older movie, I believe, these would have been shot during the day with a kind of dark-colored film over it to convince the audience that it’s nighttime. I’ve seen it done with a blue filter more than with green, I love the green versions so much more. The screenshot directly below looks like something Maurice Nobel would have designed for Looney Tunes, with very clear contrasts inside the analogous color scheme.
There could have been an infinite amount of screenshots for this film highlighting different features, the costuming, the characters, etc. This is a sophisticated movie and does get quite boring in places because the characters are so clever in their dialogue that I often felt like I was watching a book being read to me. I love it and don’t at the same time. I’m looking back on it from a different time and I see potential in different ways. I found it really interested that Ian Fleming’s first James Bond book was published in 1953, this film by Hitchcock came out in 1955, and the first Bond film was in 63. There are so many sharp visual images from this movie that, I imagine, helped create a foundation for what Bond would become in film. It’s almost as if someone pitched the first Bond film as To Catch a Thief but make it pulpy and outrageous, sophisticated but fun!