Interesting:  a former member of the French Resistance became a jewel thief and now has reformed (albeit he is still in trouble).  The role is not a good fit for suave Cary Grant, but we’re glad he’s in the film—i.e. To Catch a Thief (1955).  We’re comfortable with him.

Interesting, too, is that women here can be plainly foolish.  Feminists over the years have virtually communicated that women, except for Christian ones, are never foolish—a lie, of course.  Even so, there should be no argument that however foolish Grace Kelly‘s cocky Francie can be, she is also excellent with her initiative-taking, her apologies, and her glamour.

Hitchcock‘s thriller deals with the suspicions befalling the Grant character when an unreformed burglar uses Grant’s modus operandi for current stealing.  It’s a scenic joyride often filmed in the French Riviera, but some poor choices were made.  Fades to black are constant, and a sequence with kissing and actual fireworks is awkward and hokey.  A lot of contrivance exists in the not-great script, even if numerous lagniappes crop up.  Maybe Thief is worth catching, but I wish it had been better.  There is something canny, though, about a scene wherein a man sucks it up and tolerates a woman’s strikingly fast driving because he secretly wants to elude a car that is chasing him.

A horse falls on a boy called James in Larry Woiwode‘s 1993 story, “Silent Passengers,” and of course he is hospitalized with dreadful injuries.  Where is God?  Well, though He is never mentioned in the story, He is there.  Woiwode, a Christian, writes in such a way as to intimate this.

The details here are very troubling, but the story ends with James’s survival and recovery.  Hence we know God is there, but would we know it if James had died?  We could have, sure, but it would have been harder for the author to work it out, to make it evident.  Yet death is a reality, notwithstanding . . . so is recovery.

Another, longer literary gem, Woiwode’s “Firstborn” (1983), is a study in anger and guilt.  Rough childbearing precedes a desire to utter, “Good God, forgive me,” for a husband has been unfaithful (as has his wife) and moderately, unfairly violent.  Sad but hopeful, “Firstborn” is a religious story without Catholic or Protestant references.  I do not quite think it has greatness, as “Silent Passengers” does, but it is exquisitely thoughtful and consistently powerful.  The man of faith did it again.

A horse falls on a boy called James in Larry Woiwode‘s 1993 story, “Silent Passengers,” and of course he is hospitalized with dreadful injuries.  Where is God?  Well, though He is never mentioned in the story, He is there.  Woiwode, a Christian, writes in such a way as to intimate this.

The details here are very troubling, but the story ends with James’s survival and recovery.  Hence we know God is there, but would we know it if James had died?  We could have, sure, but it would have been harder for the author to work it out, to make it evident.  Yet death is a reality, notwithstanding . . . so is recovery.

Another, longer literary gem, Woiwode’s “Firstborn” (1983), is a study in anger and guilt.  Rough childbearing precedes a desire to utter, “Good God, forgive me,” for a husband has been unfaithful (as has his wife) and moderately, unfairly violent.  Sad but hopeful, “Firstborn” is a religious story without Catholic or Protestant references.  I do not quite think it has greatness, as “Silent Passengers” does, but it is exquisitely thoughtful and consistently powerful.  The man of faith did it again.

The plot of Alias Betty (2001) is a bit too good for most screenwriters to have concocted, but not too good for the novelist Ruth Rendell, on whose novel–The Tree of Hands–it is based.  A French film by Claude Miller, it concerns a mentally unbalanced woman who kidnaps a little boy in order to make a gift of him to her grieving, now childless grown daughter.  What we have here is a person whose suffering drives her to become comfortable with an immoral situation.   Several story strands are juggled perfectly; the novel is adroitly adapted.  Nothing wrong with the acting either.

(In French with English subtitles)

Cover of Alias Betty

I would have enjoyed Elmer Kelton‘s novel, Shadow of a Star (1959)—“star” as in sheriff’s badge—a tad more had it been devoid of the hackneyed concept of townspeople demanding that a deputy turn over to them an appalling killer so that he might be lynched.  The deputy, young Jim-Bob, is the sole person in charge of the killer now that the sheriff, Mont Naylor, has been badly wounded.

Ah, but for a short Western, the book is pretty rich and certainly exciting—not really tired.  Hell is other people—Jim-Bob faces lawbreakers big and small—yet the tale is uncynical.  Men can often be trusted, those can’t be are in genuine trouble.  Further, there is much economy and little softness in Star.  It can’t be much improved on.