I crib a title of a wickedly funny
novel by Kingsley Amis, to embrace a
screen illusion of unforgotten re-
membrance to Californians of one's
age in the 1950s. A sudden inspira-
tion of one's mother, to take my old-
er brother to Philadelphia to be in-
troduced to his grandfather via the
Super Chief, left my father and my-
self to borrow vacation houses of
friends in Palm Springs and Balboa,
to improvise a sort of holiday in
sitù. I can just see my brother, an-
noyed by a fish fork for the first
time, as I remember the falling in-
to, in a wicker basket on the Rivi-
era, of the most thrilling face a
boy could ever look upon in those
days, if not still. Even now, our
archest critics speak of the geni-
us of Hitchcock, in so many vernac-
ulars, for all their tortured acad-
emicism, it can make one car-sick.
He raised a generation of America,
on delight to be the ungrown child.
Neither our director, nor our men-
tor, he is our trust officer, ad-
ministering remittances of an es-
tate in endless probate. We ought
to be able, it seems upon this ump-
teenth announcement of Oscar nom-
inees, to imagine one of these wor-
thies, sixty years hence, sharing
chicken with Grace Kelly or Cary
Grant, from a hamper which will
shortly frame their kiss. The one
this canny Magwitch thieved for us,
as if expecting some future tide
of artistically advanced maturity,
and allowed the heart to inherit.
Alfred Hitchcock
director
John Michael Hayes
screenplay
Robert Burks
cinematography
To Catch a Thief
Paramount, 1955©
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