To Catch a Thief (1955) is a great movie for a lot of reasons — Alfred Hitchcock directs! Cary Grant and Grace Kelly star! Edith Head‘s costume designs! Gorgeous shots of the French Riviera! It’s a fun, entertaining movie about two Americans trying to catch a cat burglar in the south of France. And yes, it’s a contemporary movie, set in the period it was filmed. But near the end of the film, there’s an extended sequence set at a masquerade ball (during which the thief is expected to strike again), and suddenly we’re in crazy 1950s-does-18th-century land!
Let’s take a look at all the technicolor glory of the masquerade scenes, and admire Edith Head’s amazing designs!
According to Jay Jorgensen’s biography of Edith Head, the masquerade ball
“was the most expensive costume scene Edith had ever done. One of the biggest challenges for Edith was designing dresses for the extras that allowed for the cameramen to shoot close-ups of the glittering necklaces the actresses were wearing. The necklines had to allow a clear view of the jewelry, but if a dress was strapless and the camera shot too tight, the actress could appear as if she were wearing nothing at all. Edith was able to design gowns with simple lines that still gave Hitchcock the elegance he sought to show off the gems. Hitchcock instructed Edith to dress Grace as a ‘fairy princess’ for the ball. Edith created a ball gown with a huge skirt of gold mesh adorned with fabric birds and accessorized with a golden mask, and topped Grace’s head with a golden wig.” (Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer)
What’s your favorite over-the-top look from To Catch a Thief‘s masquerade scene?
I love how everyone smokes like crazy… surprised no one took fire with all the polyester around. I think the blackface with Grace is actually Cary Grant. Oh, and I’m not that much into gold lamé and think Mom’s costume is better: She’s rocking that blue velvet and I WANT THAT WIG!
Seriously, all that smoking around all that satin just makes me cringe. I wonder if all the costumes came away from that production with random cigarette burns?
And imagine the SMELL!
I wonder if there would have been all that much polyester fabric around in 1955. Polyester drip dry shirts for everyday wear, sure. Don’t know what the cheapo costume fabric of choice would have been. Anybody know?
More likely rayon than polyester in 1955. Poly hadn’t become omnipresent yet.
Grace’s gold lame
Forget the crook … that shepardess has sheep as accessories (look behind her escourt)
HA! How did I miss that?
I know that using black children as accessories is appalling to us now, but we have to admit that it’s doubly authentic – splendidly-dressed black child attendants really were all the rage in the 18th century, and most filthy-rich socialites on the Riviera in the 1950s wouldn’t have had a qualm over hiring a couple of them to add pizzazz to a fancy-dress ball outfit. (Actually they probably still wouldn’t now, if they could count on pictures not being leaked.)
Black attendants – historically accurate for the time, perhaps thoughtless for the date of the film.-
It looks to me like the Indian couple are wearing fanciful 18th century Indian clothes, as an homage to their own culture.
That brocade on the center figure in the next-to-last shot looks . . . almost right for the mid-1700s. I’d love to see the dress close up.
wonderful movie and wonderful costumes. Grace Kelly is the most beautiful woman ever seen at the cinema. Good costumes, I like all of them, especially the one of Princess Kelly and the one of her mother.
There is an actual live sheep!