An 18th Century IT TAKES A THIEF, based on the real-life character François-Eugène Vidocq, if not so much on his real life. And why not? After all, his own (ghost-written?) memoirs can’t be verified though the outlines of his life story prove irresistible: Service in the army; three escapes from the galleys; jailed for theft; an unlikely advance to top detective in the Paris police force solving crimes using his own wrong-side-of-the-law experiences. He even hires a band of ex-convicts to work under him. Famous & honored, he retires to go into business, quickly goes broke and rejoins the force, this time to secretly set up The Crime of the Century! A great movie hiding in plain sight there! Unfortunately, this early Stateside effort from Douglas Sirk, recently emigrated from Germany to Hollywood, drops most of that juicy outline & comes across as ten-ton whimsy on what it does keeps. With George Sanders, as Vidocq (along with sidekick Akim Tamroff), pulling off scams when he’s not on the lam or wooing elegant ladies (Signe Hasso; Carole Landis) for cover. As a production, the film manages the trick of feeling both over-stuffed and threadbare, with a poorly constructed script that shortchanges Vidocq’s tri-part focus on crime, romance & detective work. Disappointing.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Sirk was on much firmer ground in his previous film, SUMMER STORM/’44, also with Sanders and based on Chekhov’s THE SHOOTING PARTY. (see below)
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