Charade (1963) Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Story by Peter Stone, Music by Henry Mancini

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Romantic Comedy

This film is as good as it gets in terms of combining a Hitchcock style suspense story with the comic/romantic elements one might expect from a film about two attractive and mature adults who happen to fall in love. You'd think Sir Alfred Hitchcock himself would've directed this one, but its a knock-off from another director (Stanley Donen), obviously inspired by Cary Grant's earlier Hitchcock roles in films like "To Catch a Thief" (1955) with Grace Kelly or the two-hour thrill ride of mistaken identity and Cold War espionage that made "North By Northwest" (1959) a touchstone for many filmmakers like Donen.
(below, the opening scene from the film. Grant and Hepburn meet and you can already see the chemistry will be superb.)


"Charade" is a jewel box of a film with a few brass knuckles in with the Cartier diamonds.

Audrey Hepburn is Regina (Reggie) Lambert, who works as a United Nations translator. She decides to divorce her remote and rather uncaring American husband, Charles Lambert, after a brief marriage. (She decides while on a vacation from him at a Switzerland ski resort.)

What Regina doesn't know is that divorce is just so unnecessary "Chuck" has already been murdered---thrown from a fast-moving passenger train in France during the pre-title sequence to be exact, already freshly dead and in his pajamas. It's so undignified I feel, but its all over very fast so it doesn't hurt the chic Parisian backdrop of the rest of the film.




Back in Paris to bury her husband, Regina finds herself being pursued by at least three men who want to terrify her into revealing where the hundreds of thousands of dollars Charles stole from them years ago while in the super secret OSS branch of the American Army.

Trouble is, Charles never bothered to tell Regina about such trifling sums and where and how they were hidden. Another trouble is.... the bad guys don't believe her. She goes to the American Embassy in Paris for help. They aren't much help either, but a nice fellow in one of the offices there (Walter Matthau) tells her to play along and they will see if they can help later. Frightened, she turns to a seemingly nice man she just met named Peter Joshua (Grant) for help.

But is Peter Joshua his real name? Turns out he has at least three others aliases, suitable for all occasions. . All the more reason not to trust him too much either.


But the trouble is this guy, though better-looking than the thugs who want the money, is apparently in league with said thugs. Or is it other four men? Do I hear five? Well somebody is busy secretly bumping them all off one by one so don't bother to keep count.

Suffice to say this is a film to see again. And if you haven't seen it yet, what a treat!

Charade (1963)-Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn-- L.O.V.E.( Nat King Cole)

A nice compilation showcasing one of the best romantic comedy-thrillers ever, with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in a bit of dream casting. They don't make them like this anymore.

Charade
1963
also with Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy
Director: Stanley Donen
Screenplay by Peter Stone

Audrey Hepburn - "Moon River"

Audrey Hepburn was many things in life: a young resistance courier in WWII Holland, a dancer, model, mother and a tireless special ambassador for the world's children on behalf of UNICEF, but her film acting I think will be her greatest legacy. There are a lot of great moments assembled here from her films, and here are a good sample assembled by a true fan.

Audrey Hepburn

I suppose with male leads in movies its something called "cool". A male actor generally has to have cool to be a star. Steve McQueen was cool. Bogart was cool. George Clooney has that as well today. I suppose "cool" is a guy who looks like he can handle himself in most any situation, but who also has just enough vulnerability for a female fan to feel that the right woman could get under his skin and maybe steal his heart.

With women who are movie stars its something else...eroticism, perhaps? Well, that will take a lady so far. A lot of people just want that. Elegance, sure. But not someone too aloof. (Garbo's persona is way too aloof for me, for instance. Grace Kelly is more my speed. Your mileage may vary.) Intelligence, certainly, but not the sort of woman who always seems to want to compete with the guys...like Jodie Foster for instance. Julia Roberts is more to my liking, and Sandra Bullock. (Again, this is my taste. This is not science.) But most of all I think a woman needs to retain a certain mystery on screen and still have an earth-bound charm in some kind of paradoxical chemistry to really be a star.

I can't speak for other men, but there are a lot of women I've been attracted to over the years as a film goer. But if I had a chance in Heaven to have lunch sometime with just one lady I saw in my whole life of watching movies and could to try and make her laugh at my jokes and my attempts at conversation and wit over a hour-long meal, that lady would be Audrey Hepburn. (My wife I think would understand. She's lived with my fascination with this remarkable woman for quite a few years. Oddly enough, I met the love of my life only a couple weeks before Ms. Hepburn passed away. I was down at the time since I had read Ms. Hepburn had had inoperable cancer and had gone back from Los Angeles to Switzerland for her final days. )My Shirley was a bright light when I needed her in part because the loss of such a great humanitarian and star (far too early, for she was only 63) made the world seem suddenly a good deal dimmer.

It started for me with the movie "Sabrina" (1954), which I saw at around age twelve. It was the first Humphrey Bogart film I ever saw and this was the early 1970's and Bogart was a very popular cultural icon in those times. He played an older magnate romancing Audrey. (A lot of much older men were often cast opposite her, as some critics like Molly Haskell have pointed out. )

But a funny thing happened when I saw "Sabrina" again about three years later. What was a Bogart movie for me the first couple times around suddenly became an Audrey Hepburn movie. There is a great clip of her standing in a chic outfit--you can see it for yourself on the You Tube link below. If you watch that clip you will see what I think is one of the most striking and beautiful images of a woman ever shot. And its a total "G" rated experience!

She made very few films, but about half of them were excellent and a couple like "Roman Holiday" (1953) and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) are flat-out classic films. (Personally, I think her work in Fred Zinnemann's "The Nun's Story" (1959) is her best performance and, as she was nominated for an Oscar six times, that's saying something.) "Charade" (1963) is a great Hitchcockian romantic-suspense comedy with Cary Grant. Even in a movie like "Paris When It Sizzles" (1963) she is totally marvelous and believable even when the movie itself is a fractured mishmash of cliches and too-cute inside jokes about movie-making.

To me, Audrey Hepburn was that combination of mystery and charm that is too hard to really describe. She also had those eyes you see in the photo above...you get the idea, right?

Her later life after she mainly retired from films was devoted to her family and to making trips and appearances for UNICEF to bring the suffering of children inflicted with famine and diseases in the Third World known to those in more comfortable nations. I remember that when I think of Audrey...I think that's the way she would probably want the world to remember her for. But I also remember a certain scene at a train station in a black and white Billy Wilder movie that, incidentally, also had a couple guys named Bogart and William Holden in it. She was extraordinary in a that one moment in time,and, in other films and in other settings, one truly beautiful, chic and very sharp lady.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORnOHTR_s4A

Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund