Charade (1963)
“The best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made”.
No one seems to know who said it, but this quote neatly sums up the appeal of the slick and swanky 60s transatlantic thriller Charade. Think of the Birds, Rear Window and Marnie. Look past the disturbing sexuality and godlike direction, and you’re left with gorgeous clothes, rich colours and chic sets. This is the Burt Bacharach/Jet set vision of mid-century life on the movie screen: a world of immaculate travel brochures, chiming lounge music, grey flannel suits and coats with gigantic buttons. Charade is a engaging thriller helmed by two suave and dreamy movie stars, but its key appeal is its creation of velvety cinematic luxury. Away from Da Nang, Woodstock and Alabama, this film preserves a vision of international 60s glamour: the global promise of Kennedy’s Camelot.
Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) is a spectacular, doll-like American expat living the high life in the chalets and grand apartments of western Europe, drinking champagne and daintily picking her way through plates of salade niçoise. Her husband, Charles, is absent and unloving, a distant problem to be dealt with by divorce. Reggie is shocked to learn that Charles has been murdered, and even more shocked to discover that he was a spy and a thief. Along with a small gang of his wartime OSS colleagues, Charles is revealed to be responsible for the theft of a shipment of gold earmarked for the French resistance. Charles took all the gold for himself before meeting his fate at the hands of one of his partners in crime: dangerous men who have yet to find the stolen treasure. Teaming up with a mysterious suitor named Peter Joshua (Cary Grant), Reggie searches for her husband’s stash while warding off the gang of killer crooks.
Charade is a Hitchcock-lite Euro-thriller, mixing pangs of grim violence with cosy romance. There’s a constant chop and change between the laid-back classy escapism of Hitchcock’s breezier films and the grisly horrors of his shockers. It’s as though To Catch a Thief were interrupted by the murders from Psycho. Hepburn and Grant slowly stroll through Parisian boulevards and across the banks of the seine, eating ice cream and flirting with wit and imagination. In the next scene, a man is suffocated in a plastic bag or has his neck ripped open in a lift. Director Stanley Donen ably works his way through every tonal shift, using Grant and Hepburn’s reassuring presence to massage the nastiness and ease the segue back towards romance. The film is fast and tight, never lingering on its violence or losing itself to longueurs of dull courtship. There’s always a new twist or a golden quip to keep things moving along.
Neither Grant nor Hepburn are particularly talented actors in the technical sense. Listen to the way that Hepburn exaggerates every big line with a sharp intake of breath; listen to her dragged-out vowels and punctuation mark shrieks. Grant is operating in Roger Moore territory: raising eyebrows, speaking in a constant suave drawl, shifting his eyes around and transforming from wry detachment to middle-aged action. Hepburn and Grant are movie stars: incomparable screen presences who are impossibly slick and lovable from the moment that they enter the frame. As long as they’re cracking jokes and chatting each other up, everything feels right with the world. Donen wisely leans on the comic sensibilities of both stars, revealing that Grant has a penchant for pulling strange faces and Hepburn has a strong camp sensibility. For this film, played in this style, the casting couldn’t be more perfect.
The glossy qualities attached to the two stars are nicely undercut and challenged by the film’s supporting cast, including a young James Coburn and an against-type Walter Matthau. Before Charade, Matthau was best known for his sweet and sympathetic supporting performances in dramas about destructive men (see A Face in the Crowd or Bigger Than Life). Afterwards, he became associated with comedic performances from The Odd Couple and A New Leaf all the way to Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men. In Charade, he gives one of his lesser-known ambiguous dramatic performances, bristling with edge and mystery as he manipulates events to his advantage. Coburn’s character is a fairly generic cowboy, but the sheer level of confidence and swagger that the actor brings to the role is undeniable. He’s an outsider, cooler than cool next to the Hollywood establishment cast.
Stylistically, the film wraps itself in the haute couture chic of its time. All of Audrey Hepburn’s clothes were designed by Hubert de Givenchy (a fact proudly proclaimed in the opening titles) and they’re utterly gorgeous. Coats of deep red and sprightly yellow are accompanied by cream-coloured pillbox hats, making Hepburn look a little like Jacqueline Kennedy. Henry Mancini’s music has become synonymous with the clubs and lounges of the mid-century jet set, making it the perfect accompaniment to Charade’s swanky vibe, especially when accompanied by Johnny Mercer’s crooning. With lush strings and cool drums, Mancini’s theme scores the multicoloured-title sequence: a Maurice Binder creation of spiralling whirls and wavy lines that wouldn’t be out of place in an Austin Powers movie. Everything is pretty, artificial and conservatively groovy. I dig it.
Just like Donen’s greatest film, Singin in the Rain, Charade is obsessed with Hollywood and constantly self-referential. Grant and Hepburn’s characters make pointed references to My Fair Lady (a Hepburn movie) and An American in Paris: a star vehicle for Donen’s frequent collaborator Gene Kelly. Whether these nods were originally part of Peter Stone’s script or whether they were the result of Donen’s influence is unclear, but they’re an effective addition to the film’s comforting vibe of silver screen artificiality. Donen made no bones about his film’s debt to Hitchcock, and a final suspense sequence set in an empty theatre plays out like one big nod to the master of suspense’s thriller Stage Fright, using a trapdoor as an improvised tool of execution instead of a safety curtain.
Charade is Old Hollywood’s final great movie. Hepburn and Grant make it into one big movie star victory lap, using their charisma and charm to effortlessly glide through every scene. Charles Lang’s photography is sumptuous and Peter Stone’s story is always taut and exciting, constantly changing gears with new revelations, hidden identities and clever ideas. Donen’s movie successfully rises above the limitations of the pastiche, taking Hitchcockian tropes and dressing them up with lavish new clothes. With a hot script and an appropriate cast, he created an original and creative tribute rather than a dull copy. If you would like to watch Charade, you won’t have a hard time finding it. Due to a bizarre clerical error on its copyright screen, Donen’s movie has been in the public domain ever since it was first released. Look to YouTube and you’ll find it within seconds. Please do.