Sometimes after watching so many movies over a period of time certain parallels stand out and call attention to themselves. Here are the parallels Ive found in two of my most favorite film classics, TO CATCH A THIEF (TCT) (1955) and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (NBN) (1959). 1) Both are directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 2) Cary Grant stars in both movies. 3) Jessie Royce Landis stars in both films as Grants mother (although she was a year younger than him) in NBN and as the mother of his girlfriend-to-be in TCT. 4) TCT is written by John Michael Hayes who wrote another Hitchcock classic, the unforgettable REAR WINDOW (1954). NBN is written by the legendary Ernest Lehman, the only screenwriter who was honored by an honorary Oscar in 2001. Lehman also wrote Hitchcocks last film, FAMILY PLOT (1976). 5) An airplane pursues Cary Grant in both films. It attacks openly in the famous dust cropper scene in NBN. But there is a similar scene in TCT in which a similar propeller airplane pursues the boat in which Grant is running away from the Nice harbor. It buzzes the boat a couple of times before breaking the chase and drifting away. 6) Both films have that famous scene where a female character dangles from a high structure and Cary Grant grabs her by the wrist at the last moment and grabs her to safety. In NBN she is the leading lady dangling from a colossal presidential face on Mount Rushmore. In TCT she is the villain dangling from the roof of Silva's Villa. 7) In NBN, Hitchcock makes his trademark appearance by trying to board a public bus at a New York bus station. In TCT, Hitchcock makes his trademark appearance by sitting right next to Grant as an anonymous passenger in the back row of a passenger bus traveling on the dusty back roads of French Riviera. Sometimes not only life but fiction repeats itself as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
