CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[WanMan]

The wife and I watched To Catch A Thief (Amazon) yesterday. It has been a while since I've seen the HD Net version, and even longer since I have seen the DVD, but it is one of our favorite movies. Initially, whenever I see an old film I fight myself from re-focusing the image on the screen before and after the feature has started--and this was no exception.

The first Cary scene with him in his garden, a close-up of him hearing the sound of an approaching automobile (police), teased me as I had to resist the pessimist conclusion of a blurred transfer vs. Hitchcock's shallow depth of field. This was evident in many scenes and it tool a few minutes before I stopped analyzing and started enjoying the movie.

Scene to scene showed the limitations of the range in aerial footage capture and I concluded that few, if any, privately available helicopters were available at the time (1954-55) as probably a monoplane was used in the car chase scenes. This seemed rather unnecessarily soft, but may have that was more the intent or condition of +50 years passing.

It was interesting to see the clothes at the time and how well one can see a lot of them in terms of detail, color, and the often reminded limitations of viewing on fixed-pixel displays (LCoS in this case). The thin horizontal stripe shirts on Robie and Danielle (boat scene) kept the 'shimmering' effect in full play, and something I couldn't resist pointing out to the wife.

I was entertained by the colors of the movie, the apparent black levels (given the projector), and the nice aspect of white-shirt-on-black-blazer cleanness without the expected bleed-in condition often seen in many transfers for TV examples (e.g. My Fair Lady). The flower market scene is especially nice for the period, place, etc.

BTW, I found it amusing at the first dinner scene with Grace Kelly. I was looking at her neck and shoulders while teasing the wife's neck. All was well until I commented on it and then the wife realized I was touching her neck. LOL And the night-time scenes were quite nice, but without seeing this on a CRT setup or maybe a digital currently available.

For the price, if you like movies of this type, period, or with any of these actors or director then I highly recommend this offering. I do not know if this movie was a remake as there is one dated from 1936, and there may be a remake in the works if one can trust IMDB.

[WanMan]

Funny scene between the birds and Alfred.