Robie, along with his cellmates, went into the maquis, the French underground, and fought against the Germans.
When the Germans occupied Franceĭuring the war, they emptied the jails. Weapon more dangerous than a glass cutter.” Eventually, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in a French prison. He worked alone and “was never known to employ violence or carry a Before World War II, Robie had put hisĪcrobatic training to use as a jewel thief operating on the Côte d’Azur and was nicknamed Le Chat (The Cat) by the French press for his gravity-defying ability to soundlessly enter and exit hotel rooms and apartments of his wealthy victims. To Catch a Thief, the 1952 novel upon which the screenplay was based, tells the story of John Robie, an American expatriate who is trying to live a quiet life in a villa, which he audaciously names Villa des Bijoux (Villa of the Jewels), in the South of France.
As was common throughout Hitchcock’s career, this film was adapted from a previously published work.
#Movie to catch a thief series#
While generally acknowledged as being one of the lighter-weight films directed by the “Master of Suspense,” it contains many of the hallmarks for which Hitchcock is rightfully recognized: an innocent man falsely accused of crimes he did not commit a cool blonde with mysterious motives a setting shot through with glamour and romance and a suspense-filled plot involving a race against time-in this case, an ex-jewel thief (played by Cary Grant) who has to catch a copycat pulling off a series of daring heists on the French Riviera in order to prove his own innocence and clear his name.
Brandt, a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and creator of the Web’s A David Dodge Companion, recounts the circumstances of that robbery and the man responsible for its deft execution.)Īlfred Hitchcock’s romantic thriller To Catch a Thief was released by Paramount Pictures in August 1955. (Editor’s note: It was 70 years ago today that an audacious burglary took place on France’s Côte d'Azur, inspiring author David Dodge to pen one of the best-known crime-caper novels of the 20th century.
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