TheRetroCritic

Never quite my favourite Hitchcock film, To Catch A Thief has nevertheless grown on me these past few years. Similarly in tone to North By Northwest , it always felt like a slight, silly effort from The Master. And yet these days I find there's something irresistible about it. This is probably THE most chilled-out whodunit you'll ever see: there's little to no hurry. Characters have long chats while driving down the sunny French coast, stop by to have picnics, go for a swim... It's one big, long holiday with a freakishly tanned Cary Grant at the heart of it playing a cat burglar trying to find a copy-cat burglar in order to clear his name. But where the chillaxed nature of the film infuriated me as a kid, now I get the joke: take a typical Hitchock thriller and make it as lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek as possible, set the whole thing in the most inoffensive setting and get Cary Grant to wear horrible sweaters and scarves: voila! To Catch A Thief never pret