Count Your Blessings #2

 

CYB: To Catch a Thief and Moonraker

CARY GRANT AND GRACE KELLY EAT FRIED CHICKEN IN 4K VISTAVISION --- Films are fun to wander through, lightly graze upon, especially where polished to sheen not thought possible, to wit To Catch a Thief in 4K, streaming at Fandango (formerly Vudu) and available on UHD disc. It no longer matters if this Hitchcock works on level of drama, suspense, or comedy … just to look will do, sharpness beyond dreams past, color at hysteria pitch of vibrancy. To Catch a Thief was designed as travelogue more than narrative or even stars, Vistavision much a thing following White Christmas for holidays 1954, French Riviera a place few saw or would ever see first person. To Catch a Thief addresses objects and lifestyle, never more than now when being there as object of all film consumption was truly accomplished. Thief is of costumes, food, interior design, up-to-moment fashion, flesh as fetishized and draped by jewels. It celebrates things rather than themes, 4K viewership finally in receipt of gifts Hitchcock teased but only now fully delivers. To extent of decoration alone, To Catch a Thief may be a greatest of his achievements, increased to yearly will-watch just to realize again that it is possible to step inside a movie and comport with characters who acted and interacted long ago, now and henceforth on startlingly intimate terms with us. Will there, is there already, capacity to enter fictional scenes and participate in action, even determine outcomes? To do so seems inevitable, go-to events recorded generations ago a miracle I’d dare not imagine till recent. Now, and having seen To Catch a Thief and others of similar vintage on 4K, there's reason to know it will someday happen. If we are able to talk with Cary Grant, will he talk back? AI generators would say certainly, and soon, if not right now.

I watch To Catch a Thief in chunks as one might snack from cookie bags, not to empty same or finish the feature, instead to satisfy sweet tooth then wait for next time to again address urge. “Flaws” I notice are no deterrent to joy, Cary Grant groaning under exposition and obliged to repeat over/again that yes, he was the notorious “Cat” once upon prewar time, but no more, and how to unmask a currently busy jewel thief imitating his style? Gab along this point is repetitive, “John Robie” pleading innocent to one accuser after another for much of 106 minutes, all OK for amidst locations stunning as never before in movies. To watch To Catch a Thief is to call back memory of what it looked like over sixty year passed exposure. Television used 35mm for network runs, then IB Techicolor prints went to local stations dealing later with Paramount. Latter was lovely if full-frame, thus head room and square shape not in keeping with what Hitchcock would have seen through viewfinders. Moon Mullins let me have a 35mm IB trailer in 1979, closest glimpse I’d get of what 1955’s public saw. Now what we have is more immersive than anyone could have imagined then, technology allowing corner-to-corner perfection on home screens to approach bigness of theatre screens. Beautiful people of then are the more so now, Grant and Grace Kelly other-worldly attractive in ways you’d not think possible for moving images captured seventy years ago. Hitchcock especially gains in 4K for visual flair he lent everything … whole new levels of his art are revealed as each enhanced release comes to us, latest a North By Northwest you’d swear was 70mm if homes allowed for such installment. How’s for someone writing book-length, Hitchcock on 4K --- A Reevaluation. Lots of fresh insight might come of that. When a Hitchcock underestimated as To Catch a Thief does such nip-ups upon fresh digital delivery, is any sky the limit? Question of whether you’ve “seen” To Catch a Thief must now be addressed anew. Seems to me this and other Hitchcocks are at last fulfilling hopes he had when making them.

BOND AS 4K BEYOND --- Moonraker along with whole of Bonds can be streamed at Vudu/Fandango in 4K, each of entries enhanced by the uptick. Pleased to see Jaws and his girlfriend survive the end title of Moonraker but was concerned that he’d have to answer for killings committed in The Spy Who Loved Me, then realized Jaws could join MI6, be given a retroactive license to kill, and act as Bond’s majordomo in For Your Eyes Only plus Bonds beyond it. Missed opportunity was this. Re Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Drax, I’ve read they very much wanted and tried to get James Mason to play Drax and he refused. I’d have handed him a blank check and said fill in any amount you want. Why did Lonsdale choose to play his villain so flat? Why does Lois Chiles too seem non-committal? There is a way to perform in a James Bond film that some actors get and others never do, but my attitude suggests Bond never changed, not true as he constantly did, and maybe Lonsdale/Chiles sensed that and accommodated themselves to it, being effective counterweights to sillier aspects of Moonraker, as also is John Barry’s splendid as always score, plus Moore who could please and even surprise where Bond has a near-miss and takes a while getting bearings back, like aftermath of the centrifuge ride. We cared less about Moonraker in 1979 for it not approaching The Spy Who Loved Me, but I recall screening a 16mm print of the latter during the early nineties and one of viewers pointing out that it was “too disco,” as good and accurate a capsule review as one could seek. Barry scores alone place certain Bonds above others whatever quality of the underlying film, advantage Moonraker over The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only which followed. Barry was so essential to 007 ensemble that to leave him off left gaping hole nothing else, let alone inferior scoring, could fill, here being series equivalent to Herrmann association with Hitchcock and the Ray Harryhausen fantasies.

Moonraker for this reason and others seems much improved, or is it me with no one else in agreement? Comedy weighs but is isolated. Drop Jaws, the pigtail girl, and a gondola chase and Moonraker would play reasonably straight. Apart from these is Roger Moore investigating, pry-into desk drawers and poking about warehouses, same sorts of things Connery did and to that extent 007’s differ but little. Moore reminded me of Errol Flynn in some of his expressions and line readings. Did Moore know Flynn? Haven’t read any of his books, does he say so in them? Moore Bonds went overboard seducing every woman in sight, even one sent to aid his mission, which to me sort of cheapened them both, whereas Connery in Thunderball had Martine Beswick as “Paula” who although they share a hotel suite, keep to individual bedrooms and private baths like professional colleagues they are. A weakness of Moores was trading on film fads of a moment as in Live and Live Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. Even Jaws got his name to evoke Universal’s shark. Moonraker has an aural gag spun off Close Encounters of the Third Kind which got laughs when I was there in 1979, but who’d know or care now? Outer space stuff is where a lot of budget undoubtedly went and it is spectacular, idea to beat Star Wars at effects game, but here again was poaching off trends rather than develop your own. Easy to forget what an enormous fad sci-fi became in the late seventies, not having abetted since. Moonraker from what I understand was enormously profitable and by accounts most so of the Roger Moore Bonds. Yes, Jaws was back because the public wanted him back, the series having reached point where bonus baubles had to hang off each 007 tree. Was it no longer enough to simply be James Bond?