Gave them a second chance and they improved.

Gave them a second chance and they improved. Apr 8, 2017 16:55:01 GMT Salzmank likes this

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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 8, 2017 16:55:01 GMT

Apr 7, 2017 4:07:12 GMT joekiddlouischama said:

Apr 4, 2017 14:38:15 GMT Doghouse6 said:

Your observation's indeed intriguing. For the purposes of such a discussion, would you mind specifying the way(s) in which he goes against his grain? I have a supposition or two, but don't wish to initiate anything that might be based on an errant one, so I thought it best to first ask.

Doubtlessly, Hitchcock made this decision in To Catch a Thief because he did not conceive of the film as a dark suspense piece. Instead, in his public comments, he basically dismissed the movie as an entertainment vehicle with no intellectual interest whatsoever. And perhaps the lack of "suspense" renders the film questionable among some viewers as well.

But Hitchcock's decision makes sense: while To Catch a Thief is ostensibly a thriller, thrills—at least as conventionally defined—are never the point. The point is the stars and their personal chemistry or coy sexual chemistry, the sun-splashed French Riviera locations, and the utter command of style both within and outside of the diegesis (basically a cinematic term for narrative, for those unfamiliar with the label). So Hitchcock's decision surely makes sense, yet it is still surprising given his avowed preference for "suspense" over "surprise."

By the way, there is another, less significant, instance in the film where the director opts for "surprise" over "suspense"—at the costume ball.

Thanks for your reply. What I was unsure of was whether it was the specific surprise element you found to be the most significant departure from Hitchcock's more typical construction, or the broader one of the film being essentially a whodunit, something the director made a point of saying he avoided. But he wasn't above inserting the occasional surprise mid-plot (Frenzy, Vertigo, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, for instance) or as a climactic revelation (Psycho, Stage Fright, Spellbound, among others).

Hitchcock once said, "Some films are slices of life; mine are slices of cake." With TCAT, he has his cake and slices it too: the whodunit aspect is obscured under the frosting of his most oft-repeated suspense formula, the Wrong Man Thriller. The identity of the actual thief - the MacGuffin - is of little interest to the audience and any suspense, although uncharacteristically de-emphasized, is concerned with Robie's efforts to unmask the thief and clear himself before the law closes in on him. It's perhaps worth noting that Hitchcock once stated that his Saboteur Statue Of Liberty climax represented something of a mistake, musing that it should have been the hero rather than the villain dangling, and yet he repeated that scene structure as the culprit is found in a similar position at the climax of TCAT.

So on some levels, it's typical Hitchcock; on others, not. And as you suggest, the primary interest is in the development and resolution of the push-pull of the romantic relationship, just as it had been in Notorious, to cite another example.