Charade (1963)

Charade is an American comedy thriller film first released in 1963, directed by Stanley Donen.  The film stars Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Reggie Lambert returns from a holiday in the French Alps to learn that her husband has been murdered, thrown from a train in his pyjamas.  Shortly before he died, Lambert liquidated all of his assets, but there is no trace of the money he accumulated in doing so.   At the funeral, two mysterious men turn up to inspect the corpse and subsequently start to harass Reggie, convinced that she knows the whereabouts of Lambert’s missing fortune.  Reggie is informed by CIA spymaster Bartholomew that her husband once belonged to a team of four men who, during WWII, were charged with delivering a large sum of money to the French resistance.  One of the men was killed by the Nazis, but the others escaped after having hidden the money.  It appears that the two men who are intimidating Reggie are Lambert’s former associates, determined to reclaim their part of the stolen money.  Reggie makes an unexpected ally in Peter Joshua, a petty crook who also has an interest in Lambert’s fortune.  All is not what it seems, however...

Stanley Donen, the director who helmed the musical classics Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), returned to form with this stylish Hitchcockian comedy-thriller, after a fallow period churning out lacklustre comedies.  The dream pairing of the ever-popular Cary Grant with Audrey Hepburn, the star of Donen’s earlier hit Funny Face (1957), ensured the film was a great success.  Although a mere stone’s throw from the end of his career, Grant still knew how to charm his ever-admiring audience into submission and Hepburn is a delight, turning in what is possibly her best performance.

Charade begins as a light-hearted romp, the playful banter between Hepburn and Grant making up for some glaring deficiencies in the plot.  The film’s most memorable image is Grant taking a shower, fully dressed, in Hepburn’s bathroom – an attempt to lampoon the restrictions that the Hollywood code of yesteryear had imposed on Grant’s earlier features.  Things soon hot up in the second half as the bodies start piling up, Hepburn loses track of Grant’s real identity and the audience struggles to work out who are the good guys and who are the villains.

The film may not be as consistently brilliant as the Hitchcock thrillers it attempts to emulate but it is great fun and packs in a surprising number of good laughs along the way.  Hepburn looks stunning in her Givenchy outfits whilst Grant is, as always, great entertainment value, terrific in the action scenes and irresistible in his scenes with Hepburn.  Excellent use is made of the Paris location, including a suspenseful chase sequence in the metro that culminates in the nerve-wracking showdown.  Henry Mancini’s haunting theme song is the icing on a deliciously succulent gâteau.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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