Movie Notes

 

September 7, 2024

 

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a Turner Classic Movies addict.

 

I watched 2 Grace Kelly movies last week: “To Catch a Thief” and “The Swan.” Jessie Royce Landis played her mother in both movies. The contrast in the characters in the different movies was interesting: In “To Catch a Thief”, both women were self-assured and cool under pressure. In “The Swan”, Grace was diffident and biddable, and Jessie was dithery. It was kind of surreal, actually, watching the difference. I guess that’s why they got the good acting gigs.

 

(Side note: If you want a good laugh, watch Cary Grant as Grace is driving him along the mountain road in “To Catch a Thief”. His character is a former French Resistance member, and he’s a cat burglar with nerves of steel—but they’re not up to her driving.)

 More notes:

When I wrote about the last Mission: Impossible movie, I lamented the lack of new story ideas, and asked, “And who hasn’t had a fight with a villain on top of a moving train?” Earlier this year I saw a movie from the 1920’s that featured a fight atop a moving train. I was stunned at how old the gag is. Today I got curious and looked up the first movie to do it. I don’t know that it’s the oldest, but a fight-on-a-moving-train scene was filmed in “The Great Train Robbery”—in 1903.