In Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief, Cary Grant plays a former hero of the French resistance who can't quite convince a skeptical world that he's mended his ways and abandoned his glamorous old existence as a diamond thief for a life of simple, legal pleasures. Grant's criminal history works against him in that respect, but it's also quite possible that the film's characters would rather inhabit a world in which Cary Grant is a debonair international jewel thief than one in which he's a mere retiree content to while away lazy afternoons tending his garden. With the possible exception of "secret agent," "continental master thief" seems like the only job worthy of Grant. As befits a movie with a protagonist nicknamed "The Cat," Thief proceeds with feline grace, a blissful light-footedness that looks effortless enough, but could only have been accomplished by a master operating at peak form. If nothing else, Thief is a lesson in charisma courtesy of Grant and Grace Kelly, reluctant lovebirds who find love in larceny and larceny in love.
