Gave them a second chance and they improved.

Gave them a second chance and they improved. Apr 8, 2017 20:17:52 GMT Doghouse6 likes this

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Post by Salzmank on Apr 8, 2017 20:17:52 GMT

Apr 8, 2017 16:55:01 GMT Doghouse6 said:

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

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.

It's been too long since I've seen To Catch a Thief for me to add anything to this conversation on that specific basis, but, as you and I discussed on the other thread, Doghouse, Hitchcock often uses the outer trappings of a "surprise movie," such as a whodunit, but turns it into a "suspense movie."

For example, with Vertigo, the text on which it was based reveals the big twist at the very end. Hitchcock, though, cares less about the twist than about the characters--and his revelation of it in the middle makes us more invested in Scottie's reactions, which are the real focus (or should it be foci?).

Ditto with the George Kaplan twist in North by Northwest.

Even with climatic revelations in Hitchcock, for example--Psycho, Stage Fright, and Spellbound, as you note, Doghouse--the twist aspect is severely de-emphasized, far more so than many other directors would do. (Preminger, who also cares more about character than plot, does the same thing, though less effectively, IMO.) The text on which Spellbound was based, The House of Dr. Edwardes (which I've never read but which I have seen analyzed in a book on Hitchcock), emphasizes twists, clues, alibis, etc.--the aspects of a whodunit, in other words--before revealing the murderer, whose identity is a surprise.

With Spellbound, the revelation is more of an "Oh, he did it" than a "What! How could I have missed that?" which, as noted, is very much Hitch's purpose.