Cary Grant was always watched for men's fashions (he had his own L.A. men's shop for a short time in the thirties), and former model Grace Kelly after this film would have a Hermès bag named for her. Hitchcock used the pairing of these two clothes-obsessed stars for a kind of surface tension in To Catch a Thief, which sports one of the most gorgeous surfaces of all his films. Grant's John Robie, a.k.a. The Cat, is a former cat burglar and Resistance fighter enjoying retirement on the French Riviera; Kelly is an American heiress whose riches are no less nouveau than Robie's. Grant selected his wardrobe to perfectly complement Kelly's-Edith Head's best work in pastel-and Hitchcock provided the fireworks, literally. "You're a man of obvious good taste in all things," Robie the Cat is told by an authority, Lloyds of London, but Hitchcock famously wasn't. So, we naturally look for the moments when elegance is disrobed as just another McGuffin. (JB)