The “Shadow” in To Catch a Thief
A Jungian interpretation of John Robie, formerly known as The Cat.
(To Catch a Thief (1955) © Paramount Pictures; C. G. Jung, World History Archive/Ann Ronan Collection/age fotostock. Animation by Joel Gunz.)
TO CATCH A THIEF (1955) MOVES AMONG THE HOTELS AND VILLAS OF THE FRENCH RIVIERA, where a string of night-time jewel robberies have cast unwanted light on former cat burglar John Robie (Cary Grant). Just as the “government secrets” in North by Northwest function as that film’s MacGuffin, so does the issue of who the new Cat is in To Catch a Thief. The film’s chief interest is whether Robie will succumb to the sexual attractions of Francie Stevens (Grace Kelly) or remain a “lone wolf,” as she calls him in the film’s final scene. As several critics have pointed out, the title of the film reflects both Robie’s attempt to capture the new Cat and Francie’s attempt to capture romantically the old one. Robie knows he possesses all the skills he needs to be both a successful thief and a successful thief catcher. However, since his days as a French Resistance fighter he has had no need to employ those skills and has been glad to leave them behind. Now he must reacquaint himself with all the instincts that once enabled him to be a renowned jewel thief, but this time in the service of establishing his innocence, not his self-enrichment. But on a deeper level, his re-acquaintance with these instincts leads him finally to exchange his solitariness for commitment to the woman who has been pursuing him.
Publicity materials consistently depicted Robie as a shadowy figure, even minimizing Cary Grant’s bankable face. (Paramount Pictures)
Yet, the MacGuffins in both To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest serve to create the circumstances that change both Roger Thornhill (also played by Grant) and Robie from static characters who don’t want to alter their lives into dynamic ones who realize they must change. Because of those government secrets and the danger in which they put Eve Kendall, his new love interest, Thornhill discovers within himself the resourcefulness and willingness to take risks in the face of imminent death that enable him to redefine his life from “ROT” (the self-revealing monogram on his matchbooks) to a committed partner in a relationship. Likewise, it is the risk-taking and determination to clear his name that drive Robie back up to the rooftops and that will finally enable him to form a couple with Francie.
In order to convey to the audience this return to the part of Robie he has relinquished for years, Hitchcock employs, as usual, just the right visual means. The dark shots of Robie on the rooftop of the Sanford estate during the costume gala are in such dark contrast to the gorgeous mise-en-scene of the daytime views of the Riviera that they signal a temporary personal transformation of the protagonist from solid citizen to the infamous Cat. In Jungian terms, Robie is forced to encounter and embrace his shadow side in order to discover the real thief. Simultaneously, he discovers that he needs romantic love in his life in order to become whole.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) says that “to become conscious of [the shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the psyche as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.” (145) Jungians call this process the assimilation of the shadow, which, though it contains anti-social desires, also contains sources of creativity: when these are integrated with consciousness, the personality is enlarged and strengthened. In Robie’s case, for a number of years he has let his anti-social, larcenous propensities fall back into the unconscious. Now, in order to preserve his post-war social standing, he must bring back into consciousness these repressed energies. But in doing so he must allow himself to become vulnerable to the very forces he has been content to live apart from: death threats, the prying eyes of the police and, finally, love.
Most everyone in the film has a daytime side and a nighttime side. Francie acts like an ice queen when she first meets Robie, and then kisses him suddenly and passionately when he walks her to her hotel room after dinner. And it gradually becomes clear that Francie falls for him because she is thrilled by his reputation as a thief and is willing to use her body as a seductive substitute for the diamonds she believes he truly desires—a fetish that indicates that Francie also has a powerful shadow side that she is now only beginning to acknowledge. In addition, Bertani (Charles Vanel) acts like Robie’s friend and adviser when it is actually he who is behind the recent robberies; and, of course, Danielle Foussard (Brigitte Auber) is just a flirtatious young girl by day but a jewel thief by night. (Only Jessie Stevens, Francie’s mother, played by Jesse Royce Landis, has nothing to hide; her earthiness and practicality are genuine, and what we see of her personality is free of repressions.) This day/night personality motif is stressed when Robie explains to insurance agent H. H. Hughson (John Williams) that when he takes hotel towels and ashtrays he is revealing his own shadow side, that he is a thief just like Robie. The motif informs all the relationships, but because To Catch a Thief is essentially a comedy, the revelation of Robie’s and Francie’s nighttime sides do not overwhelm the progression of their growing romantic attachment: one that becomes possible only when Robie integrates his repressed tendencies into his recently formed, socially acceptable persona.
Exhibitors materials. (Paramount Pictures)
This relationship is similar in many ways to the one between Jefferies and Lisa (James Stewart and, again, Kelly) in Hitchcock’s preceding film, Rear Window (1954). In both of these John Michael Hayes scripts, the male protagonists are quite satisfied with a life without permanent romantic commitments but who then become involved with beautiful women (both played by Grace Kelly, of course) who announce their love for the two men and are quite open about their desire to marry them. And in both cases the men alternately respond to and reject the women’s advances.
Ironically, it is Jefferies’ desire to continue his nomadic existence as a photographer that comes into conflict with Lisa’s desire to settle down with him, while it is Robie’s desire to stay put in his villa on the Mediterranean that is threatened by Francie’s developing interest in him. But in both cases, new circumstances force these men to realize that the permanent relationships offered by the women are worth the sacrifice of their solitariness. In Rear Window, Jefferies’ shadow is represented by Thorwald and his tragic relationship with his wife: only after Jefferies comes to experience the threat to Lisa’s life and her corresponding courage, all caused by his indirect (and then direct) encounter with the murderous husband, his shadow figure, can he truly appreciate what she will be able to bring into his life.
In To Catch a Thief, Francie’s assistance enables Robie to catch the real thief. First of all, she is the one who arranges to have him invited to the Sanford gala. And she devises the plan to deceive the French police that allows Robie to slip away unnoticed onto the rooftops. Now he can embrace his dark side, so powerfully symbolized by the dark mise-en-scene of the rooftop montage, the side of himself he believed he had set aside years ago (though the opening shots of him at home in his villa feature an actual black cat, which of course serves as a metonymy for Robie the thief and suggests that his shadow is always available to him).
I don’t want to give away what happens in the closing scenes in case there are those reading who have not seen the film for a while. Suffice it to say that psychologically Robie’s integration of the shadow leads to successful results for both the MacGuffin plot and the romantic one. The film ends with a joke that Hitchcock describes to Truffaut as “grim”—a reminder that more challenges to Robie’s happiness lie ahead, similar to Jefferies’ second broken leg in the preceding film. To Catch a Thief may be “a lightweight story,” as Hitchcock remarked to Truffaut, but it’s lightweight in the way The 39 Steps is lightweight…unpretentious, witty, and psychologically insightful.
WORKS CITED
Jung, C. G. “Aion: The Phenomenology of the Self” in The Portable Jung. Penguin: 1971.
