The trailer for Charade opens on a blender. In goes one-third suspense, one-third comedy, and one-third romance. Out comes an arch rom-com thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in swinging 1960s Paris. “As you can see, she was in serious trouble,” Grant’s voiceover explains of his leading lady. “But she still found time to enjoy herself.”
And so does Charade, which is just as invested in a hilarious party game sequence involving an orange as it is in a life-threatening rooftop brawl. When Hepburn’s droll Regina “Reggie” Lampert first meets Grant’s dashing Peter Joshua at a swanky ski resort, she flirtatiously warns him, “I already know an awful lot of people, so until one of them dies I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else.” But little does she know her rom-com repartee doubles as ominous foreshadowing. Soon enough, Reggie and Peter find themselves caught up in a mystery involving her dead husband, a missing fortune, and some increasingly grisly killings linked to three brutal heavies.
The 1963 New York Times review of Charade couldn’t get over the “ghoulish humor and chuckle-some morbidities” of this December release, warning readers that “the people bringing their youngsters to see the annual Nativity pageant and the Christmas stage show may blanch in horror when it comes on.” But while Charade might not fit the Yuletide spirit, that’s exactly what makes this unusual romantic comedy thriller perfect for the Halloween season. In fact, it’s hard to find retrospectives of Charade that don’t compare it to the work of spooky season master Alfred Hitchcock. Charade has famously been dubbed “the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made.” Yet what it brings from the romantic comedy into the thriller is even more interesting than what it brings from the thriller to the romantic comedy.
In place of the sinister psychological edge Hitchcock might have lent the material, director Stanley Donen brings a winking, kitschy sense of fun—the same light touch he’d previously brought to beloved movie musicals like Singin’ In The Rain, On The Town, and Funny Face. Charade opens with a bloodied dead body being thrown off a train, only to smash cut to a colorful animated title sequence scored by Henry Mancini and animated by famed Bond title designer Maurice Binder. The joy of Charade is how it perpetually wrong-foots you with its tone. The film leaps from genuinely gruesome moments of violence to cute rom-com scenes were Reggie and Peter wander the Seine eating ice cream or Peter hops in the shower fully clothed in a bid to make Reggie laugh.
The twisty plot kicks off when Reggie returns from vacation to learn that her husband liquidated his nefariously accumulated wealth only to turn up dead without any sign of where the money might be. Confused more than distraught, Reggie soon finds herself hounded by French authorities, three disgruntled men (Ned Glass, James Coburn, and George Kennedy) from her husband’s past, and a demanding CIA administrator (Walter Matthau). Peter, meanwhile, seems like a dream ally. “How about making me vice-president in charge of cheering you up?” he sweetly offers. But it quickly becomes clear there are ulterior motives behind his charisma, although what he’s after and whose side he’s on are the biggest mysteries of all. Charade heightens the stakes of courtship into a literal life-or-death conundrum: Can you love someone if you don’t really know who they are?
A lot of what makes Charade so special actually came at Grant’s request. He’d previously turned down the chance to be Hepburn’s leading man in Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Love In The Afternoon because he thought the 25-year age difference between them would be too jarring. Before he finally agreed to their first big screen pairing in Charade, he had a couple of requests for screenwriter Peter Stone. Grant wanted the script to openly acknowledge the age gap, rather than ignore it. And he wanted Hepburn’s character to be the romantic pursuer, so he didn’t come off as a creepy old man chasing after a younger woman. It’s a pragmatic behind-the-scenes decision that winds up giving Reggie a refreshing amount of agency.
The most important element Charade borrows from the rom-com genre is that it roots its story first and foremost in a woman’s point of view. Reggie is neither a femme fatale nor a doe-eyed innocent but rather a frazzled everywoman committed to taking charge of her own life—a rare female archetype for the spy-thriller genre, especially in the early 1960s. (She’s essentially playing the Grant role from North By Northwest.) Unlike the sheltered women Hepburn had portrayed in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, Reggie is appealingly self-possessed. Early in the film, she turns down the suggestion that she should stay unhappily married simply because her husband can outfit her in a wealthy lifestyle. “I admit I moved to Paris because I was tired of American Provincial, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for French Traditional,” she deadpans. Later, she doesn’t bat an eye when she has to take up her old job as a UN translator after her husband’s death leaves her penniless.
Glamorous as she may be in her Givenchy wardrobe, Hepburn makes Reggie charmingly relatable. Though she’s naturally aghast at the gruesome intrigue around her, she’s also kind of enthralled by it too. Who wouldn’t want to find themselves at the center of a stylish spy caper? Reggie’s mix of world-weary detachment and sheepish guilelessness adds a fascinating wrinkle to the thriller genre, just as Grant’s multiple identities serve as a winking commentary on the rom-com one. The early 1960s was the era of “bedroom comedies” like Pillow Talk, in which Rock Hudson adopts a fake identity in order to seduce Doris Day. Charade uses a similar plot device for a different aim. Instead of the story of a man who uses multiple identities to trick a woman into loving him, Charade focuses on a woman who loves a man despite the fact that he seems to reveal a new alias every couple of hours.
So much of Charade’s unique tone hinges on Hepburn’s ability to make us feel the high stakes of Reggie’s situation while still bringing a champagne fizz to the romantic comedy stuff. It’s hard to imagine anyone else delivering the same blend of dry humor, whimsy, and emotion—yet another reminder that though Hepburn is often first and foremost remembered as a style icon, she was a truly phenomenal dramatic and comedic actress too. Hepburn makes us feel every inch of Reggie’s infatuation with Peter, which is crucial for a climax centered on whether she should trust her heart over her head. As my A.V. Club colleague Gwen Ihnat puts it in her own retrospective on the film, “It’s the essence of a romantic leap of faith: holding your breath and diving right in, even though you’re making yourself completely vulnerable by doing so.”
Just two films away from retirement, Grant is equally fabulous in Charade, combining his Hitchcock-honed talents with the screwball comedy skills he’d been perfecting since the 1930s. Part of what Grant had learned playing against the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell was how to complement a strong leading lady without overshadowing her. And while Audrey Hepburn has a feminine waifishness that’s different than those classic screwball heroines, Grant still provides an ideal counterbalance. Stone wrote with the two stars in mind, and filled his script with zippy one-liners and winking jokes, as when Reggie stops mid-sentence to ask Peter of his cleft chin, “How do you shave in there?” Though this was the one and only time Grant and Hepburn worked together, their big screen personas meld seamlessly in a film that even in 1963 felt like a little bit of an old-fashioned throwback.
Grant would play his last romantic leading man the next year as a surly naval ally in Father Goose, followed by his final film role as a matchmaker in 1966’s Walk, Don’t Run. But Charade is one last hurrah for his suave, debonair, confidently romantic big screen character. Hepburn, meanwhile, would recapture elements of Charade’s tone in two different films: the genuinely unsettling home invasion thriller Wait Until Dark (another great Halloween watch) and the wildly entertaining heist comedy How To Steal A Million opposite Peter O’Toole. Yet Charade is unique in that it fully invests in being a thriller just as much as it fully invests in being a romantic comedy.
It’s in not sacrificing one tone for the other that Charade succeeds at becoming something wholly original. Love and loss, life and death, trust and suspicion: They all live side-by-side in Charade, just as they do in real life—only here they’re packaged into something endlessly sophisticated and impossibly clever. Both nostalgic in its love for classic Hollywood and modern in its cheeky genre shifts, Charade is a film that truly has something for everyone. This blended cocktail doesn’t so much deconstruct the thriller and rom-com genres as look at them slightly askew to bring new elements to the foreground of both. And that makes Charade both a trick and a treat for the Halloween season.
Next time: What the hell happened with All About Steve?
57 Comments
This movie is amazing. Charming, romantic, suspenseful, endlessly quotable. One of those movies you have to watch through to the end whenever you come across it. Excellent choice for the column!
Yes, it’s sensational. However:“Early in the film, she turns down the suggestion that she should stay
unhappily married simply because her husband can outfit her in a wealthy
lifestyle. “I admit I moved to Paris because I was tired of American
Provincial, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for French Traditional,” she
deadpans.”Reggie isn’t referring to staying married when she says this, she’s talking about the suggestion she has affairs.
This movie was well known for a lot of years for being in the public domain. As a consequence, if you saw it you probably saw a very low quality dub. Fortunately, Criterion released a very superb restored version a few years back.And yes, the Hitchcock feel is very hard to miss here – the story is a cocktail of intrigue, romance, psychological thrills, high style, and dark humor. What amazes me is that somehow Audrey Hepburn never made an actual Hitchcock movie.
My bet would be that she knew what a misogynist piece of crap he was (the whisper network was alive and well, even back then), and decided she was doing just fine without him.
Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. By the ‘50s/’60s he was deep into his “icy blonde” fixation, and looking for someone he could mold into an image, like he did with Grace Kelly and tried to do with Tippi Hedren. Hepburn was established by then and didn’t much need him.
Rumor has it that they wanted to work together, and were planning to, but she had a miscarriage and had to pull out of the film. But don’t let that get in the way of your worshipping this hugely overrated actress.
You know, I used to think as a teen that she was overrated but growing up and revisiting her movies it has been like, wow, she knew how to be a classic theatrical actress AND convey emotion at the same time. Or I don’t know. She is just a delight to watch in every movie she was in. You can see the kind of trite story of a nun because of her presence (and well, Zinneman storytelling craft as well).
Yeah, she was only beautiful, charming, lovely, and kind woman who selflessly devoted much of her life to helping others, so fuck her, right?
Weirdly hostile, but okay.
Uh sure, unlike the comment I was replying to?
She was meant to be in Marnie. But seeing how her character was meant to be violently raped I can’t say she made the wrong call turning it down. She’s too good for that.
Public domain, yep. I first saw it on the afternoon movie on a local TV station and fell in love with it, and then I bought one of those cheap Goodtimes Video VHS copies at the grocery store for $3. The transfer was terrible, but it was good enough, and that was what I had until I bought a bargain bin DVD in the ‘90s that might have looked worse than that Goodtimes cassette, and then, thankfully, Criterion released a quality DVD version.
I love everything about this movie, but not the movie; I hate the movie. But I love the cast—except Matthau’s mustache— and I love the music and locations, etc. But this is one of those movies that gets to be classic just because it has all the trappings of a classic. But it is a terrible movie and nothing about the relationship between Grant and Hepburn on screen ever seems even remotely true. It isn’t quite a parody of a Hitchcock movie, but it is nowhere near as good as a Hitchcock movie
I can gush about Audrey for days on end. Its a great shame she’s seen as only a fashion icon, when it should be humanitarian first, fantastic actress second, fashionista third. This film is a prime example of jumping between tones effortlessly.
Isn’t she known as an actress first? I know there is a similarity to a lot of her characters, but there is for Cary Grant too, and I think they’re generally considered equally strong leads. Her career wasn’t as long as his, but I think she still is seen as having a substantial career.
There has been this dismissive attitude towards her in the last ten years regarding acting. Like that she was only pretty and nothing more. Clearly those people didn’t see Nun Story.
I guess there are people who think Elvis Presley couldn’t sing, either, and can’t look past him in a white suit on CBS in 1977.
You know, I’m not a fan of rom-coms (Shaun of the Dead notwithstanding) but I always appreciate these columns.
Does Cary Grant just always have people trying to throw him off of high places in his films?
Anyway finally watched this a few months ago. Pretty good, didn’t care for the ending though. Particularly the final button, but a lot of these types of movies from that era seem to end like this. Hepburn’s character seems to fall in love way too fast and easy. And yeah I get that it’s Cary Grant but still.
James Coburn is devilishly slick and sinister. George Kennedy the most menacing I’ve ever seen him. Also Walter Matthau is doing his thing, eating sandwiches. I can respect that.
It’s established in the film that Regina does fall in love way too quickly and easily. Charles Lampert swept her off her feet and she married him without knowing anything about him—not even what he did for a living, or if he had any living relatives. It’s all a little ridiculous, but I could say the same for a number of Hitchcock films. Charade is just so enjoyable that my suspension of disbelief kicks in and I just enjoy the ride.
The comment section of a very well movie like this one tend to read a bit like those analysis pieces of well known movies that end up mentioning the same points as if they were text books, so anyway, some trite points here:- Yeah, I cannot resist the charms of the two leads. Audrey Hepburn gives me much gay diva love, that kind of love you have for an actress that is more “I want to be like her”- Hitchcock is there, of course, but the presence of Mancini gives a huge 60s chic Blake Edwards boost.- Arabesque, its spiritual sequel-almost-remake, is not as appreciated but the Mancini tune is even catchier and girl it gets gruesome when it needs to do.- Donen was a pretty good director, wasn’t he? Even if you try to dissect the role of a director and wonder how much this part of the film was from that technical guy, that part from the script writer, that other from the actors, the fact that most of them are commited to a vision is more than pure chance. I may even defend Saturn 3 on certain days.
I came here to say something similar. It’s like a Hitchcock idea directed by Blake Edwards, despite neither actually being involved. As I age, Cary Grant’s role in this film is the type of man I hope I age into.
I wasn’t aware of Arabesque, I’ll have to check that out. Caroline mentions How To Marry A Millionaire, which is a pretty good movie in the same general ballpark. As far as Charade’s actual remake, The Truth About Charlie, it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
(Of course I meant How To Steal A Million, I always confused those two titles)
Thandiwe Newton playing the prim English naïf is one of the few actresses who could come close to Hepburn’s charm in this film, but replacing Cary Grant with Mark Wahlberg in ‘first act of Fear nice guy mode’ is one of the most puzzling casting decisions I’ve ever seen.
I don’t think we have any Cary Grant analogs today – an actor who can be sophisticated and funny simultaneously.
Daniel Craig’s been doing some interesting comedic roles lately—he could probably pull it off.
There are definitely actors who could pull it off, but it’s not an archetype in high demand these days. Tastes shift.
George Clooney is the only Old Hollywood-style actor we have left.
“As far as Charade’s actual remake, The Truth About Charlie, it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”I ran across this remake of Roman Holiday on some streaming service and had to turn it off after about five minutes.https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0093877/
Moral of the story is don’t remake Audrey Hepburn films. She was utterly unique and nobody can ever quite be her.
I will confess that I like Arabesque better than Charade even though the plot of Arabesque makes no sense whatsoever, no matter how hard you try to put it together. I think that the reason may be that Sophia Loren has always been more my type than Audrey Hepburn, and Arabesque has two scenes in which Sophia Loren might not be wearing any underwear (not counting the shower scene). Also, Alan Badel has one of the best “suave villain” lines in cinema history (“Oh – and if I don’t hear from you by noon tomorrow – try and think of
some remote corner of the world where I won’t find you. I don’t think
you can – but try”).
Yeah, TTAC is a real mess. Thandiwe Newton is perfect, but Mark Wahlberg?!!? And you get the feeling Demme was more interested in showing how different ‘00s Paris was from the ‘60s than the story.
When he gave a speech after getting an honorary Oscar, he described himself as a hands-off director, someone who saw his job as assembling the right people for the project, pointing them in the right direction, and trying to stay the hell out of the way. There’s a lot of humility in that statement, but he’s not wrong. What he didn’t get into is how difficult that whole “keep everyone pointed in the right direction” aspect of the job can be, and by all accounts he was fantastic at that. He was also a wonderful collaborative director: willing to work with actors, writers, cameramen, etc to take chances in an effort to turn what might’ve been perfectly decent scenes into something extraordinary. Probably my favorite example is the conversation Grant and Bergman have in bed together in “Indiscreet.”
Was that his “just show up” speech? That was great.
Speaking of Sabrina, I think both the original and the remake would make for a great article. Feels like neither version really gets remembered much, but I’ve always enjoyed both of them. Plus I’m a sucker for whenever Harrison Ford tries his hand at comedy, even when it doesn’t work as well (Six Days Seven Nights).
I feel like the Sabrina remake is actually better than the original.
I feel the same, although that may be because of my mentioned love of Harrison Ford doing comedy, plus I haven’t seen the original since before the remake came out. Need to watch it again.
Parents introduced this film to me as a kid- and have watched it every couple years since. Fell in love right off the bat. Just a delight to watch. This may be the first acknowledgment in print about the film’s greatness I’ve ever read. Nice to know there are other fans out there. Nicely written.
I thought “Diabolique” was the film considered the best Hitchcock he didn’t make. Or at least Hitchcock himself had really wanted to make it.
I don’t know if Diabolique is the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock didn’t make, but I do know that Gaslight is the only non-Hitchcock film about which I actually got into an argument with someone who insisted that it had been directed by Hitchcock.
We discovered this on Netflix or something a few years ago and it quickly became one of my favorite and most re-watched movies. It’s genuinely equal parts thriller and romantic comedy and the way it veers between tones and genres is impressively deft. Between the script, the direction, and the leads (Walter Matthau should also be singled out), it’s kind of lightning in a bottle—I can see someone trying to remake Charade and it easily devolving into an absolute tonal mess. The only movie I can think of that even tries something similar is So I Married an Axe Murderer, oddly enough, though it’s obviously far sillier and more comedy forward.I’ve also seen and enjoyed How to Steal a Million, which is equally charming and might be the most 60s film this side of What’s New Pussycat.
Jonathan Demme did remake it as the French New Wave-tribute The Truth About Charlie in 2002 with Thandiwe Newton and Mark Wahlberg in the Hepburn and Grant roles. She is decent and he is very not good.
Oh man, most Sixties film is a really hard determination to make. But I would absolutely love watching the contenders to try to decide. I’m going to throw Casino Royale into the mix as well. I’m a big fan of the incomprehensible European films from the Sixties. So for me you can’t be the most Sixties if you don’t have at least some random or surreal moments. A soundtrack by Mancini or Bacharach is also a big plus, but not required.
Again, there are many Blake Edwards movies that deserve to be there
I have to say, as a lover and collector of Sixties soundtracks, this is one of the best. When I was in high school the theme song was one of my go-to solos on free day in choir. Just love it. The film’s not bad, either.Now you’ve got me wondering if Cary Grant didn’t retire for the same reason Audrey Hepburn did. I know she was fed up with being cast alongside older men, maybe he was fed up with being cast alongside much younger women. Though I will say, he always had his roles written so he was being pursued by his love interest instead of being the pursuer. He said that when playing against Mae West he realized that the person being pursued is always the true focus of the film, so he made sure it was always him after that. It’s one of the things that make his romantic comedies stand out.
I can think of a couple off-hand where he was definitely the pursuer – People Will Talk and His Girl Friday.
His Girl Friday definitely, and it’s one of my favorites. People Will Talk is an odd duck because it’s as much about him pursuing Ronald Coleman’s character’s friendship, for ulterior motives at first. Philadelphia Story is also an odd one in that until the very end it’s not clear either of them want the other back. He’s just sort of wandering around the edges making the occasional sly dig.
Philadelphia Story, with its “people should stick to their own social class” moral and Grant’s character straight up knocking Hepburn’s character around is…definitely a problematic fave.
Philadelphia Story is at least critical of the upper classes, unlike High Society which removes all that for a ‘poor rich people having to economize to pay their taxes’ angle. I get angry just thinking of that scene.
Cary Grant/ Ronald Coleman/Jean Arthur is The Talk of the Town. People Will Talk is Grant and Jeanne Crain as a progressive doctor and his unmarried, pregnant student. Both are really, really good, albeit in different ways.
Damn! I always get those two mixed up.
This is one of my favorite movies. From the first moments of that Mancini score set to the Maurice Binder titles, to the surprising amounts of gore and shock value as Charles Lampert’s associates meet their deaths one by one, to the suspense of the final chase through Paris, it’s just classic.How could it not be? Cary Grant just dripping charm and hidden menace; Walter Matthau at his Matthau-iest (“Would you cay-ehhh for a SANDwich, Missez LAMPitt?”); Audrey Hepburn essentially being a walking dictionary definition of the word “dazzling”; the absolutely wonderful dialogue (“You fell for her like an egg from a tall chicken!”).Goddamn, now I have to go watch this again.
I only just watched this movie about a month ago and I immediately thought “How has this perfect film escaped me so long?” I love it so much. What a cast.One thing that stood out to me is how Hepburn’s character is this compulsive eater, yet if you look closely, she actually barely eats anything on camera. A bite of lettuce in the opening scene, a nibble of a sandwich, I’m pretty sure she just holds the ice cream cone near her mouth like a microphone. Made me chuckle.
I have this on DVD – I pretty much have it memorized -and still when I run across it on tv, cannot change channels. Grant is at his best, Hepburn is more charming than in any of her other roles, and the rest of the cast is just amazing. The locations don’t hurt either.(I’m almost sure that when the horrible remake, The Truth About Charlie, came out on DVD, they packaged it with Charade. I guess so you could watch the real one and throw away the Marky Mark one?)Also – mentioned in this review is Father Goose, which is damn good too. Grant was beautifully self-aware of his image and of movie stardom in general. No offense to any modern stars who magically ignore their age and the age difference between them and their co-stars, but… Oh, okay. Some offense.
I was once on a plane and was flipping through the entertainment [sic] options and came across The Truth about Charlie a few minutes in. A few minutes after that, my reaction was “My God, they’ve made a remake of Charade!” Followed, a few minutes later, by “My God, they’ve made a really terrible remake of Charade!”
Is Funny Face really all that beloved? I know that the studios had a habit of pairing Audrey Hepburn with men considerably older than she was (Gregory Peck – 13 years; Burt Lancaster – 16 years; Cary Grant – 25 years; Gary Cooper – 28 years; Fred Astaire – 30 years; Humphrey Bogart – 30 years) and only occasionally with men her age or younger (and Albert Finney and Sean Connery didn’t show up until much later), but Funny Face is the only one in which I find the older man’s interest to be actually creepy.