Charade ***** (1963, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, James Coburn, Ned Glass) – Classic Movie Review 683

Stanley Donen’s 1963 gleaming gem of a stylish, effortless black comedy thriller Charade is graced with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn at their adorable and chic best.

‘You can expect the unexpected.’

Director Stanley Donen’s 1963 gleaming gem of a stylish, effortless black comedy thriller Charade is graced with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn at their adorable and chic best. Their star quality glows and sparkles, and their chemistry together purrs enchantingly.

Cary Grant, still dangerously sexy at 59, plays a handsome stranger who may or may not be called Peter Joshua but he certainly meets troubled Paris widow Mrs Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn).

She was just about to divorce her husband when she found out that he had been murdered after trading all their money into cash, which is missing. Grant seems interested in her, possibly romantically, but especially also in her husband’s money, which may have come from a World War Two payroll he stole.

Regina is being chased by various villainous weirdoes (a great collection of them comprising Walter Matthau as Hamilton Bartholomew, George Kennedy as Herman Scobie, James Coburn as Tex Panthollow and Ned Glass as Leopold W Gideon) who are apparently after her little boy and certainly seem to assume that she knows where the missing money is.

Who can she trust? Fewer people soon, that’s for sure, as the villains start turning up dead one by one.

The other top-quality ingredients are the deliciously creepy support performances and the witty, constantly twisting script which provides expert tension and surprises, always hitting the right tone. Peter Stone’s sterling screenplay is based on his story The Unsuspecting Wife, written with Marc Behm.

It’s perhaps a shame that Alfred Hitchcock didn’t actually direct this, but then he was busy on The Birds in 1963, and, as Hitchcock copies go this is the business. But then, surprisingly, director Donen turns out to be a stalwart stand-in for the Master of Suspense, and he proves himself a master chef of the Hitchcockian soufflé here. And this one really rises. It’s very much in the vein of North by Northwest and very nearly as good.

Plus, among the film’s delights is Charles Lang Jnr’s superb Paris location cinematography, and there is a plush Henry Mancini score to complete the mood, as well as his memorable title song (with Johnny Mercer lyrics), which was Oscar nominated.

Also in the cast are Jacques Marin, Paul Bonifas, Dominique Minot, and Thomas Chelimsky.

Hepburn won the Bafta award as Best British Actress.

Charade was pointlessly and charmlessly remade as The Truth about Charlie in 2003.

Donen had just made The Grass Is Greener (1960) with Cary Grant and went on next to make the similar-to-Charade thriller Arabesque (1966).

Stanley Donen (1924–2019).

RIP Stanley Donen, director of Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Pajama Game (1957) and Two for the Road (1967). He died on 21 February 2019, aged 94.

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The cast are Cary Grant as Brian Cruikshank (alias Peter Joshua, Alexander Dyle and Adam Canfield, Audrey Hepburn as Regina ‘Reggie’ Lampert, Walter Matthau as Carson Dyle (alias Hamilton Bartholomew), James Coburn as Tex Panthollow, George Kennedy as Herman Scobie, Dominique Minot as Sylvie Gaudel, Ned Glass as Leopold W Gideon, Jacques Marin as Inspector Edouard Grandpierre, Paul Bonifas as stamp dealer Mr Felix, and Thomas Chelimsky as Jean-Louis Gaudel.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 683

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