Cinema Sunday: Charade

If you stumble across the 1963 film Charade, you might think you have chanced upon an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

All the elements of a Hitchcock movie are there.

• Convoluted plot? Check 
• Mistaken identity? Check 
• Strange and frightening villains? Check
• Posh upscale setting? Check 
• A lovely woman in peril? A gentlemen hero? Check and check
• Brutal acts of murder along side surreal absurdity? Definitely check.

Charade has all the marks of a classic Alfred Hitchcock movie except for one detail.

A credit that reads "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock". 

The director of Charade was none other than Stanley Donen, known for his work on movie musicals including his collaboration with Gene Kelly on Singin' In the Rain.  

Charade begins with expatriate American Regina "Reggie" Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) on a skiing holiday in the French Alps away from her estranged husband Charles. It is here that she meets a charming American stranger, Peter Joshua (Cary Grant).

On her return home to Paris, Reggie finds her apartment stripped bare of everything. It seems that while Reggie was gone, Charles sold everything and tried to skip town. 

He doesn't get very far. Charles Lampert is murdered and thrown off a train just as it's leaving Paris.

The money he got for all the stuff he sold? Missing. 

The police are suspicious but Reggie don't know nothing. 

At the funeral, three mysterious men arrive, each in turn approaching the coffin for the express purpose of making sure Charles Lampert is deceased. 

Reggie's feeling very uncertain and very unsafe. Thankfully Peter Joshua is in Paris who is just the friend Reggie needs right now. 

Or perhaps Peter's presence in her life is just a tad too convenient? 

Perhaps I have said too much. 

Just who Peter is or isn't continues to be a point of some contention for Reggie as she copes with a variety of threats from a variety of men for her to produce money she doesn't have.  Her late husband didn't tell her diddly squat before he died and he's surely not telling her anything now. 

What drives this movie is the chemistry that sparks between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in every scene they share. Their repartee as Reggie navigates Peter's ever shifting identities and motivations is witty and urbane.

The romantic subtext of their relationship becomes text which apparently was a subject of some concern for Cary Grant.  Cary Grant was 59 while Audrey Hepburn was 33 while they were filming Charade. The history of Hollywood is littered with thousands of movies with a 25 year age gap between some big time movie star and his leading lady and we're not supposed to notice. But Cary thought the whole idea of romantically pursuing someone 25 years his junior was a bit off. Changes were made to the script where Cary's character would comment on his age and Audrey's character was made the pursuer in the relationship.  

Charade is a film that dances gracefully between two disparate genres, suspense thriller and romantic comedy.  It is a film that is fun to experience subjectively as the characters and their mysteries suck you in and objectively as one can help but marvel at how well this movie is put together. 

Charade has been described as "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made".