Monday, April 4, 2011

Film Pairing — To Catch a Good Thief


What these two movies have in common are thieves, the South of France and casinos. What they don’t have in common are leading men and women. At first glance it might be difficult to consider watching Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955) and Nick Nolte and Nutsa Kukhianidze in the Good Thief (2002) the same evening. But while these two movies start from very different places, they end in a remarkably similar way

Grant and Nolte do what they do exquisitely. Grant’s character, the handsome, charming, sophisticate and Nolte’s character, the heroin shooting low-life provide a fascinating contrast. The female leads are also opposites. Kelly plays it cool and hard-to-get in what looks like an audition for her role as real-life princess while Georgian-born Kukhianidze, one of the sexiest actresses around, plays it hot and available.

Drink what you want during the screening, but uncork the Champagne when it’s over.

3 comments:

RJR said...

Ron, I really enjoyed the Nolte film and loved the leading lady, but TO CATCH A THIEF is one of my all time favorites. This would be a great double feature for me.

RJR

Dirk Dominick said...

Couldn't agree more!

Shameless plug: I write about the locations used in "To Catch A Thief" on lestuffblog.com.

Also really enjoyed "The Good Thief" and yes, Nutsa is smoking hot.

Thanks for your books and blog and keep up the great work!

Ronald Tierney said...

Thanks to both of you for the encouragement in these early postings. I'll only be talking about movies (and books) I genuinely like, so I'm not really doing reviews in any true sense of criticism. Also, anyone obsessed or even very interested in all things "To Catch a Thief," the link Dirk Dominick provides is definitely worth clicking.