The MacGuffin: News and Comment (04/Jul/2009)
(c) Ken Mogg (2004)
July 4
Of all the entries on To Catch a Thief that I have put up here lately (we have discussed that film several times over the years), I commend to you what I said on June 20: notably, that it is a 'soul drama' about John and Francie, two people who come together after their respective lives have begun to stagnate (which of course is a common enough situation in Hitchcock's films, but which can be missed in this case because of the comedy - Francie's mother's remark about her daughter's being 'finished' is a case in point). Francie really puts the pressure on John to admit his morally dubious past actions as 'Le Chat', and indeed to admit his very identity (the implication is that he has repressed it, something most of us tend to do about ourselves, most of the time - which is yet another way of being reminded that Hitchcock made 'Symbolist' films of 'timeless' meanings relevant to audiences everywhere). Just this Sunday morning I heard someone quote 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart to the effect that only the present moment is real and therefore the only place to be 'alive' in. Of course, Francie is very much alive in To Catch a Thief: she is 'turned on' by John precisely because he may be the dashing cat burglar whom everyone is speculating about! So much for the basis of morality (that was the philosopher Schopenhauer's point about the fundamentally amoral nature of the world's Will - and no doubt it tickled Hitchcock). The central scene where Francie really applies the pressure on John to admit who he is (he has been passing himself off publicly as 'Conrad Burns', lumberjack!) is the picnic scene. In the frame-capture below, that's Francie removing her elegant white gloves to get down to business. She had effectively declared her intentions on the drive to the picnic ground, telling John that she knew he was 'The Cat'. (In some prints, Hitchcock experimented with then-controversial 'subliminal' imagery and superimposed an image of John's black cat for a frame or two straight after Francie declares, 'You're John Robie, The Cat' - these images still exist in some videotapes of the film. Hitchcock was no doubt seeking to emphasise the pressure of Francie's challenge to John to 'fess up! Of course, he had used 'subliminal' imagery previously, in the red flash at the climax of Spellbound, and would do so again in some prints of Psycho - but that's another anecdote!) Now, the picnic scene is famous for Francie's offer to John, 'Do you want a leg or a breast?' It's a come-on with a double (or even triple) entendre. Trust Hitchcock to make light of a basically serious moment for both characters. Is Francie talking about food? About sex? Or about getting John to start being fully agreeable, and therefore prepared to admit that he's The Cat? (Answer: all of those.) But what is equally typical of Hitchcock is that he imported the line from elsewhere, and that's also an aspect of his creative filmmaking. Read on! According to my information, Winston Churchill on a visit to America was once invited to a buffet luncheon at which cold fried chicken was served. Returning for 'seconds', he asked politely, 'May I have some breast?' His hostess reacted. 'Mr Churchill,' she said, 'In this country we ask for white meat or dark meat.' Churchill apologised profusely. Next morning, his hostess received a magnificent orchid. Churchill's card accompanying it read: 'I would be most obliged if you would pin this on your white meat.' I bet that story was something else that tickled Hitchcock! After all, he was an admirer of Churchill and had a set of Churchill's collected works in the library of his Bel Air house, where he worked. Next time: a different topic.
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