Danielle Foussard (Brigitte Auber) appears in the 1955 movie To Catch a Thief. John Robie is a retired cat burglar living in the south of France. He had been arrested and convicted along with his gang of jewel thieves, but they were pardoned when they agreed to work with the French underground during the war.
Robie was quite notorious in his day was known by the French press as Le Chat (The Cat). Now suddenly almost ten years after the war, Le Chat returns as a number of wealthy women find that their precious jewels have been stolen.
John Robie is a suspect. And as a foreigner with a clouded past, the police pay him a visit. They are about to arrest him when he makes an escape.
Danielle saves John Robie
Now he is on the run from the police and when he visits members of his old gang he finds that they want him dead for breaking the peace by going back into the jewel theft business again.
Now John Robie has to clear his name to the police and to his old gang. He goes into hiding and starts using the name Conrad Burns and tells people that he is from Portland, Oregon (despite his strange accent).
While running from the authorities he meets Danielle Foussard (Brigitte Auber), the beautiful daughter of one of his old jewel thief buddies. She is just coming of age. She at first is very cold to him but later reveals that she is secretly in love with him.
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Danielle and John Robie
John Robie: I only regret one thing.
Danielle Foussard: That you never asked me to marry you?
John Robie: No, that I ever took the time to teach you English.
Robie/Mr. Burns has also met Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly) the daughter of a wealthy widow. Frances is a wild woman and likes fast cars. Driving Robie at top speed through traffic on a clifftop roadway.
Danielle takes an instant dislike to Frances. Robie swims out and meets with Danielle on a floating platform in the ocean. Frances follows Robie and there is a sort of verbal catfight between Frances and Danielle.
John Robie: Say something nice to her, Danielle.
Danielle Foussard: She looks a lot older up close.
Danielle confesses under duress.
Frances Stevens: To a mere child, anything over twenty might seem old.
Danielle Foussard: A child? Shall we stand in shallower water and discuss that?
It turns out that Danielle is the cat burglar and that she was framing Robie all along. Robie forces her to confess by hanging her over the side of a building and threatening to drop her to her death.
Danielle Foussard is arrested.
Trivia:
The original book, To Catch a Thief was written by American Travel writer David Dodge (1910–1974) who was arrested in France as a suspected cat burglar. He and his family went on a road trip the same day that a jewel thief climbed into the second-story window of their neighbor’s mansion. The police came to the Dodge’s rented cottage and found that they were not there. Furthermore, their loyal house keeper refused to cooperate with the police. Upon their return, David Dodge was arrested.
Dodge was later cleared of the charge when an Italian gymnast was arrested when he attempted to fence the stolen jewels. The gymnast confessed to being the cat burglar. Rather than complaining about his bad luck David Dodge the situation into a best selling novel that became a classic movie.