Set a Thief to Catch a Thief

David Dodge's novel To Catch a Thief was published in 1952. It was one of the many books that's been on my "I gotta get around to reading this one day" list due to its excellent reputation.

And, now that I've read it, I see why it has that reputation. It is a truly suspenseful story with a strong plot and some very sharp characterizations.

In the late 1930s, John Robie was an American with acrobatic training who ends up stranded in Europe without any money. So he discovers a new use for his training. He becomes a highly successful cat burglar known at Le Chat ("The Cat").

Robie turns out to be really, really good at stealing from the rich and giving to--well, to himself. But as good as he is, no one's luck lasts forever. In 1939, he's caught and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But World War 2 gives him a chance (along with a lot of his prison mates) to get away. He then spends the war fighting for the Resistance. When the war ends, he retires to a country farm and plans to live an honest life from then on. He's technically still wanted, but because of his war-time activity, the few people who know who he is look the other way.

Until someone starts robbing the rich again--using the exact same methods Robie had used over a decade earlier. Naturally, the cops think Robie has gone back to his old ways. His comrades from the Resistance( referred to as masquisards) are in trouble because of this as well--a lot of them returned to less-than-completely-legal lifestyles after the war and now the cops are putting pressure on them in order to catch The Cat.

As much to help his old friends as to help himself, Robie must catch the real thief, using his own experience to predict possible targets for theft, then set a trap.

A lot of the meat of the novel comes from the exploration of Robie's character. He's honest now, but he reformed out of self-interest rather than any real moral epiphany. We still like him and root for him because he does have courage, quick wits and a strong sense of loyalty to his friends. But he's still a thief at heart.

In fact, this comes back to bite him during the novel. His Resistance friends know the real situation and he gets help from them throughout the novel. But he can't bring himself to trust any of the "honest" people he knows--even those he rationally knows would believe him and help him out.

To quote from the book:

All three [referring to the three most important non-criminal characters] had been his friends. All three would still be his friends if they knew the truth, and yet his whole instinct was against telling any of them. The feeling was as strong as his faith in Bellini [a criminal friend]. When he tried to analyze the reason for it, it came to him suddenly that he put his faith in Bellini and Coco and Le Borgne not because they were fellow masquisards but because they were thieves, criminals. Francie and Paul and Oriol were not.

This character interaction adds as much to the suspense as does the book's plot. But when Alfred Hitchcock made the book into a movie in 1955, this part of the story was lost in the translation.

I don't really mean that as a complaint, though, since Hitch was incapable of making a movie that isn't fun to watch. But, still, I would have loved to see that part of the book brought to the film.

Cary Grant is John Robie, with the film in many ways being very faithful to the book. And a lot of the changes that were made were clearly necessary because print and film often have different storytelling needs.

But in the film version, Robie's past is openly acknowledged, with Robie and the other former criminals being on parole because of their wartime activities. So, where Robie is on the run in the book, he has a little more freedom in the movie. The cops still think he's responsible for the new wave of thefts, but they have no hard evidence. When he teams up with an insurance agent to catch the real thief, the cops think this is a blind while he plans more thefts. Heck, even the insurance agent, played by John Williams, doesn't quite know if he can trust Robie. The interactions between Robie and the agent are a large part of what makes the movie fun.

I suppose the change might have been to conform some aspect of the Hays Code and avoid having a protagonist who technically avoids punishment for his old crimes. But a short documentary on the DVD mentions only concerns with sexual innuendo and nothing else. I haven't researched it any further than that though, so the theory I'm about to give is really just a wild guess.

But I think the change might have been in part so that Cary Grant could get to be Cary Grant throughout the film. Robie in the book spends most of his time disguised, with his head partially shaved to make him look like his going bald. He also wears a harness to simulate a pot belly. In the movie, because he's not officially on the run from the cops, Robie doesn't need a disguise.

Now Grant was an excellent actor and it might have been fun to watch him made up to be an overweight businessman. But in addition to his acting, Grant also existed to make the ladies in the audience go Ga-Ga over his looks. Also, in the '50s, movie stars were still an important box office draw. Finally, the lack of a disguise allowed his relationship with Francie (Grace Kelly) to be more openly flirtatious than it was in the book. So there's no way Grant was going to be kept unrecognizable behind tons of make-up for most of the movie.

This also simplified the plot to the extent that he was no longer working hand-in-hand with several masquisards while laying traps for the thief. In the movie, Robie's old comrades had all gone straight and, rather than actively helping out, were angry with him for apparently bringing the police back into their lives. Movie-Robie is more of a loner, though the insurance guy and eventually Francie do get to help him out in the end.

So does this make the movie a lesser effort than the book? Not really.  Between Hitchcock's visual artistry and the location filming in France, the movie looks absolutely magnificent. The cast is superb and the story is an excellent one. Hitch's ability to bring humor into a story without diluting the suspense is also on full display.

It's a general rule that a movie adaptation is rarely as good as the book on which it is based. The novel To Catch a Thief has an emotional depth to it that I do wish has been in the movie. But taken on its own, the movie is more fun than a barrel of cat burglars.