This is a spectacular Italian poster for Caccia al ladro, aka To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. The moviemakers opted for a photo-illustration rather than a painting, and it befits the star power of the movie. It was based on David Dodge’s best seller of the same name, and in truth it’s a pretty simple-minded adaptation of the book. You can just hear the studio execs saying: “We know it’s in the novel, but we can’t have the star in disguise half the movie, we can’t have the romance go unacknowledged until the final reel, and we for damn sure can’t have the secondary female lead be more beautiful than Grace Kelly.” Movies are a different medium than books, and changes always happen, but it’s just interesting to observe what those changes are. The main change is this: Dodge’s novel has suspense, while Hitchcock’s adaptation does not. That probably wasn’t intentional.
To Catch a Thief is a superstar vehicle, and with Grant and Kelly in the lead roles, and Hitchcock in the director’s chair, it’s pretty clear the studio considered the hard work done. Extensive French Riviera location shooting and VistaVision widescreen film processing are nice bonuses, but the honchos should have had screenwriter John Michael Hayes hammer the script out a little smoother. We’re not being iconoclasts here. The movie received mixed reviews upon release, with some important critics calling it a failure. That’s going too far—it isn’t a failure. We don’t think Grant, Kelly, and Hitchcock would have been capable of making anything but a good movie at this stage. But considering the source material it could have been a perfect movie. To Catch a Thief premiered in the U.S in early August 1955, and in Italy at the Venice Film Festival today the same year.
