Grace

by Thilo Wydra

  Last but not least, there is a third cat, the young Danielle, who emerges at the end of the film high over the roofs during the night of the costume ball. She is the actual jewel thief, stealing under the instructions of Bertani the restaurant owner. And Danielle, too, would have gladly “stolen” Robie in order to run away with him to South America.

  The French actress Brigitte Auber (born in 1928), who played Danielle Foussard, vividly remembered the filming of To Catch a Thief: “It was extremely pleasant to film, very relaxed. And I liked John Williams an awful lot. What a joy it was to work with such a funny man.”219

  And further: “Grace was very elegant. She was very charming and friendly to everyone—just as well-bred people tend to be. You are raised to be that way, and it creates a certain attitude. But it stayed a little . . . superficial. Grace had a vocal coach for her role—for her dialogue. She was very conscientious about her work, so she was always with her coach. I rarely had breakfast or lunch with Hitch, but I often spent time with Cary Grant. However, Grace always ate with her coach. In short, she was adorable and charming, but kept her inner thoughts private. She was alone in her corner. Always. Or with her coach.”

  According to Brigitte Auber, the relationship between Hitch and Grace embodied “a great understanding and was something of great elegance. They were bound by a common spirit. There was, otherwise, nothing else between them . . . It was a very strong friendship. She knew him completely inside and out. And Hitch always had fun with her. Hitch took great care with Grace during filming. He explained everything to her, sometimes for up to three quarters of an hour. Grace had this adorable side, this cool side that was well-bred—however inside she was not like this at all. This was a girl who wanted to live, who wanted to be loved.”220

  At the time of filming, Grace was twenty-four. Brigitte Auber was twenty-six. However, in the film the character of Danielle Foussard is notably younger than Francie Stevens—an inversion that is completely believable because of the distinct look of each actress. Auber plays a young, athletic, and impertinent French girl, who would gladly begin a new life in South America with Grant. Kelly is an elegant, attractive, cool daughter of a wealthy family, whose mother would like to marry her off. These two character types function dramaturgically as foils for one another. As Robie, Grant eventually must decide between these two feminine polar opposites and the lifestyles associated with them.

  Brigitte Auber commented further: “All of the scenes with Grace, Cary, and me around the float, in front of the beach at the Carlton Hotel, were first filmed in the water and then a second time in the studio in a pool. Even those with Cary and me in the boat. First, some of the scenes were filmed on location in the boat, and then everything was done again in the studio against a projection of the sea, the Côte, and the police helicopter that flew around us. I had brought a two-piece swimsuit, but Grace told me that this would not work in the swimming pool. At the time, your naval had to be covered when you wore a swimsuit. So, she took me to large shop, and we bought a one-piece.”

  The key scene for this romantic triangle takes place in the water by the hotel float. It begins about one-third of the way into the film, around the forty-second minute. This scene reveals much about the interpersonal constellation of characters and about the subtext of distrust among them. Francie and Danielle meet one another for the first time and exchange an ironically ambivalent, smugly heated volley of words. Each attractive in her own way, they are both interested in wooing Robie as a romantic partner:

  Danielle: “You performed a beautiful robbery last night.”

  Robie: “Strictly routine.”

  Danielle: “You steal a small fortune and then lie on the beach with an American beauty.”

  Robie: “That’s why one needs a small fortune.”

  Danielle: “Is this your next victim?”

  Robie: “She’s a useful friend.”

  . . .

  Danielle: “What has she got more than me, except money? And you are getting plenty of that.

  Robie: “Danielle, you are just a girl. She is a woman.”

  Danielle: “Why do you want to buy an old car if you can get a new one cheaper? It will run better and last longer.”

  Robie: “Well, it looks as if my old car just drove off.”

  Francie: [swimming up] “No, it hasn’t, it’s just turned amphibious. I thought I’d come out and see what the big attraction was.”

  Robie: “Yes.”

  Francie: “And possibly even rate an introduction.”

  Robie: [to Danielle] “Oh, uh, you didn’t tell me your name.”

  Danielle: “Danielle Foussard.”

  Robie: “Miss Foussard—Miss Stevens.”

  Francie: “How do you do, Miss Foussard. Mr. Burns has told me so little about you.”

  Robie: “Well, we only met a couple of minutes ago.”

  Danielle: “That’s right, only a few minutes ago.”

  Francie: “Only a few minutes ago? And you talk like old friends. Ah well, that’s warm, friendly France for you.”

  Robie: [to Francie] “I was asking about renting some water-skis. Would you like me to teach you how to water ski?”

  Francie: “Thank you, but I was women’s champion at Sarasota, Florida, last season.”

  Robie: “Well, it was just an idea.”

  Francie: “Are you sure you were talking about water-skis? From where I sat, it looked as though you were conjugating some irregular verbs.”

  Robie: “Say something nice to her, Danielle.”

  Danielle: “She looks a lot older, up close.”

  Robie: “Ohhh—”

  Francie: “To a mere child, anything over twenty might seem old.”

  Danielle: “A child? Shall we stand in shallower water and discuss that?”

  Francie: “Enjoying yourself, Mr. Burns?”

  Robie: “Oh yes, it’s very nice out here, with the sun and all.”

  Francie: “Well, it’s too much for me. I’ll see you at the hotel.”

  Robie: [laughing nervously] “I’ll go with you.”

  Danielle: “But Mr. Burns, you didn’t finish telling me why French women are more seductive than American women.”

  Robie: “I know what I’d like to tell you!”

  Brigitte Auber described this central scene: “There was something quite unpleasant for me in this. I have never understood why I had to say the line that she [Francie] looked old, older when at close proximity. And then the car comparison. You simply don’t say such things. There was no reason for it. That shocked me at the time. They told me it was funny. But I did not find it funny. Perhaps I am not American or English enough, but I never understood this.”221

  Brigitte Auber also recalled Hitchcock’s legendary storyboards, which either he himself or someone he commissioned prepared ahead of time. Without a completed storyboard, he would not come to the set for filming. It was the same with To Catch a Thief: “Everything is written down, everything drawn up. The takes, the details—everything. Where did the shoulder have to be in the shot? Is the shoulder actually this way in the picture? His entire film was completely developed before anything began.” Yet despite this creative control, he left most of the tonal and emotional delivery of the lines up to the actors. “He did not provide much direction to the actors. After working under director Jacques Becker (Rendez-vous de juillet, 1949), this was somewhat irritating. Becker took care to show an interest in one’s disposition. He was one to always talk to you, to provoke you, and to make sure he got the right reaction for his shot. It was wonderful how Becker directed his actors. Hitchcock was the opposite. For example, the scene in the boat. We filmed it once a particular way. Then Hitch said, ‘We will film it again.’ A few things were changed, and the scene was filmed again. After that, I turned to Hitch and asked him how he would ultimately like the scene to be: ‘We have now filmed this twice with Cary and me. What do you want?’ And he answered me with a response that I found completely dumb: ‘It is all the same
to me. You are the character. You can do what you want.’ That was nonsense, since you can do 100,000 things with a character in a scene. It was a question of the direction.”222

  Interestingly, considering the genesis of the film, the chosen ending did not correspond with the one that Hitchcock had initially intended to film. The original screenplay for To Catch a Thief contained a different conclusion. Brigitte Auber remembered it as follows:

  This ending was not the original ending, but the one that the producers demanded. There was no ending as it is now in the film. At the end, after Cary bid Grace and her dear film mother farewell, he and John Williams have tea. Williams, very British and motivated a little by ulterior motives, asks Cary how it went with Grace and if he will see her again. To this, Cary answers that this is now water under the bridge. Then you learn that Grace’s mother had grown quite close to Cary, that I am in prison, and that they visit me in prison. And then, like brother and sister, we talk amicably. The film ended here. Cary continues his life as before. He stays there and does not concern himself with America and the American. And: He was the one who “dressed” me as the Cat, who taught me everything, the methods of a thief! One scene of this was filmed: Cary had just shared with me his techniques as a thief. And he said to me: “You did not do that well. I told you to do it this way.” To a certain extent, he was the big brother speaking to a younger sister. However, the producers agreed—and they were ultimately right—that one could not make the public interested in a couple, especially considering how beautiful both Cary and Grace were, without offering a happy ending. The original ending was somewhat open-ended, as if everything between them had just been an episode in their lives. That was exactly what Hitch wanted. Hitch had many such ideas, ones that were unconventional and made him, above all, quite delighted.223

  In To Catch a Thief, nothing is as it seems. Many things rise to the surface as deception, falsification, or double meaning. A remarkable game of deception. As is often the case with Hitchcock, the main point turns on identities, true and false, the dynamics of motivations. Here the issues relate directly to authenticity and falsification, to trust and distrust, to being together and being apart.

  Early in the film, Robie, fleeing from Lepic, is riding in a bus. He sits on the back row of seats, and to the left of him is a cage containing two birds. When he looks to his right, he sees Alfred Hitchcock in his traditional cameo appearance, staring straight ahead. Robie is on his way to visit his Resistance pal Bertani in his restaurant office in Monaco. Bertani lightly provokes him: “You’re as nervous as a cat.” And shortly afterward, as Danielle takes him in a boat from the restaurant to Cannes, where he will get out on the beach of the Carlton Hotel to elude the police, the double entendres increase all the more. “Cats don’t like water,” she quips, as Robie complains about getting soaked in the spray kicked up by the boat (and both of them are wearing matching striped pullover shirts). In another scene, he rides with Francie, who is speeding recklessly around the serpentine curves high over Monaco in her ice-blue convertible Cabrio (at a location only a few miles away from Route de La Turbie, where on September 13, 1982, the fifty-two year old Grace Kelly had her fatal car accident). They are being tailed some distance away by the French Police. On his side of the car, there is a sharp drop-off to the sea, and Grant nervously rubs his damp palms on his pants. In the ensuing exchange, Francie reveals her awareness:

  Robie: “Slow down.”

  Francie: “And let them catch us?”

  Robie: “Let who catch us?”

  Francie: “The police who were following you.”

  Robie: “Police following me?”

  Francie: “Yes, police following you, John Robie, The Cat.”224

  In this scene, Cary Grant’s character, similar to the one he played in Notorious when he anxiously sat next to Ingrid Bergman as they raced through the night along a Florida road, resembles an aspect of Hitchcock’s own character. As Brigitte Auber recalled of “mon petit Hitch”: “Hitch was deathly afraid of riding in cars. When I sat in the driver’s seat and drove my large American car, he cried out several times. I have never seen anything like that. And he begged me to drive more slowly. He also rarely traveled by airplane, much preferring to go by ship.” Shortly afterward, Robie and Francie sit in the car with their picnic basket, parked at an observation point on one of the sharp curves. Below them, they can see the principality of Monaco, an unforeseeable, fateful coincidence at the time. Francie/Grace presents the scene to Robie and says with deep admiration: “Have you ever seen any place more beautiful?” The view contains the royal palace, the harbor, the casino, the opera house, and St. Nicholas Cathedral where Grace would be married in April 1956 and buried after her death in September 1982.

  “You want a leg or a breast?” Francie asks John Robie, intentionally suggestive as she opens their picnic basket. Robie responds to her question as if he already senses their future together: “You make the choice.”

  Before stopping for the picnic, John Robie had said to Francie Stevens: “You know what you want; you go after it. Nothing stops you.” A significant line of dialogue. In hindsight, it sounds a little like something Cary Grant could have actually said to Grace Kelly. It is an apt analysis of her story, her sacrifices: the love affairs—particularly the one with Oleg Cassini—her country, her friends there, her language, her career, Hitchcock.

  Producer John Foremen had known Grace since her early acting work in New York. His commentary on her would have fit nicely with Cary Grant’s fictional assessment of Francie: “Only Grace Kelly could have created Grace Kelly. It must have been a concept in her head. No one else did. No manager, no agent, no producer, not even her family.”225

  Recalling her design for the extremely opulent ball gown that she designed for Grace to wear in the final scene of the film, Edith Head had the following to say: “Hitchcock told me that he wanted her to look like a princess. And she did.” 226 The invitation to the masked ball required that the attendees wear eighteenth-century themed costumes. Edith Head claimed that these were the most expensive costumes that she had ever designed. “Grace wore a dress made of fine gold lamé, a golden wig and a golden mask.”227

  Also, the other costumes and dresses that Edith Head designed for Grace were classically, timelessly elegant, almost royal in appearance. The two women traveled to Hermés in Paris, where they spent hours trying to find suitable, trendsetting white gloves. They tried on all different styles, and at the end, Grace stood in the shop with a large package and a high bill. The only things that Grace ever splurged on were gloves and shoes. Hitchcock told Edith that he was well-aware the story was set in a fashion center of the world. And of course, they were shopping in France—the birthplace of fashion—so he expected Edith to give it her all.228

  In her first scene, Grace is wearing a yellow bathing suit as she sits in the sand on the Carlton beach. She is also wearing large, white-rimmed sunglasses and a yellow head covering as she applies suntan lotion to herself. This is when she sees Robie/Grant for the first time. She later appears in a bathing dress in the hotel lobby, where her beauty renders the waiting Robie speechless. He is so amazed that Grace/Francie smugly asks, “Shall I ask the social director to introduce us?” To which Grant replies, “No, I was wondering which was the best way out.” Grace: “The Mediterranean’s this way.” They go through the columned hall of the Carlton, toward the entrance, toward the Mediterranean. All the hotel guests in the hall turn to watch them as they pass. Grace’s gait in this scene has an almost majestic quality. Edith Head described Grace’s beach attire: “She was wearing an enormous sunhat and the most beautiful black and white sundress I have ever created. It was stunning—almost too stunning.”229

  To Catch a Thief is in many ways the inverse of Marnie, which Hitchcock made almost ten years later in 1962, and in which he wanted to cast his favorite heroine, Grace. In this film, a woman is the kleptomaniac thief, Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren), and she is contracted, caught, desired, and r
eformed by a man, Mark Rutland (Sean Connery). In contrast, it is Francie who links the stealing and possession of jewels with eroticism. She magically attracts Robie, the man, the (ex-)thief. On the other hand, she formally offers herself to him. “The thrill is in front of you, but you can’t get it,” she says to him in her hotel room in the evening twilight, while outside the firework display becomes more intense. She has situated herself such that she is only seen from the neck down. The brilliant necklace sparkles around her neck, while her face is in darkness. Like a statuesque torso. Like a promising object of desire. This very cleverly choreographed arrangement serves Hitchcock’s purposes well. As she tries to convince him of the similarities between jewel thieves and alcoholics—two kinds of addicts—Robie cuts in: “I have the same interest in jewelry as I do in politics, modern poetry, or women who need weird excitement: None.” Grace is exquisitely beautiful at this point. Sitting on the sofa, she lays the necklace around her neck directly across Grant’s fingers, which she has already kissed: “Hold this necklace in your hand and tell me you’re not Robie The Cat.” She is offering herself to him. As stolen goods for Robie to steal, to covet—to love. However, Robie has long realized that the necklace is a fake. “Well, I’m not,” responds Francie. The erotic connotations are no longer ambiguous. This culminates in the sentence delivered by the truly eloquent Mrs. Stevens. On the next morning, after the nighttime theft of her own jewels, she almost casually tosses this statement at Francie, who has in the meantime become convinced that John is “The Cat.” With petulant conviction, Francie claims, “He’s a worthless thief!” To this her mother replies, “Just what did he steal from you?”