The Hand in the Collar: the delicious cat and mouse game of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly at Hitchcock

This Sunday, the channel is dedicating a new evening to “Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite actor”.

This Sunday evening, Arte will offer To Catch a Thieftranslated into French The Hand in the Collar. When we look at the filmography ofAlfred Hitchcockthis thriller is often forgotten or cited far after its great classics such as Psychosis, The Birds Or Rear window. However, in 1955, Cary Grant as a jewel thief and Grace Kelly as a potential victim played a delicious game of cat and mouse in this clever thriller…

Above all, this film will be followed by a captivating portrait of its main actor. Titled Cary Grant: Through the Looking Glass and already visible on Arte.TV, we reviewed it when it was initially put online, in 2017. We are sharing this favorite below, as well as an interview with its director, Mark Kidel, also known for his docus on Elvis Costello, Boy George, Ravi Shankar or even Rod Stewart.

Hitchcock/Truffaut: secret conversations

“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant, even me”

In around fifty minutes, the documentary maker brilliantly retraces the public and personal life of the actor who died in 1986, explaining how a painful family secret spoiled part of his existence: the premature death of his brother, then the disappearance of his mother when he was a child had a profound impact on him, preventing him from flourishing in a romantic and family relationship until an advanced age.

Taking advantage of his taste for comedy and his advantageous physique to break through on Broadway, under his original name Archibald Alexander Leach, then in Hollywood, Paramount imposing the stage name of Cary Granthe has built an eclectic, busy career, dotted with great successes, including notably Death in pursuit. This thriller marked in 1959 the reunion between the star and Alfred Hitchcock, who had already filmed it in Suspicions (1941), The Chained (1946) and The Hand in the Collar (1955).

This collaboration will be their lastbecause in the 1960s, Cary Grant toured less and less, and after the broadcast of There's no point in runningprecisely in 1966, he decided to retire definitively to enjoy his daughter Jennifer, born in February from his (otherwise brief and stormy) relationship with his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon.

Despite this new emotional failure, the birth of his daughter when he was 62 made him realize that he wanted to devote himself fully to his family life, which he finally managed to do fully with his fifth wife. , Barbara Harris, married in 1981, only five years before her death.

Accompanied by archives, but also by images filmed by Cary Grant himself, and testimonies from the star about his wish to begin experimental therapy in the 1950s – narrated by the actor from BrazilJonathan Pryce, in original version – this portrait rarely delves into the intimacy of a multi-faceted star. The British comedian Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter) has also recently embodied him in Archiea mini-series currently unpublished in France – but for which the trailer is visible herein English.

When Death on the Trail was supposed to be called The Man in Lincoln's Nose