Review of Charade (1963) by Joseph B — 11 Apr 2016

"Charade" is a fun picture from Stanley Donen, a director more well known for his musicals with Gene Kelly. The film is often called the best film that wasn't directed by Hitchcock, and yes, it does seem like a homage to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with Cary Grant. Audrey Hepburn plays Regina Lampert, an American woman musing over leaving her husband. That decision becomes easier when she arrives home to her apartment in Paris to find everything missing and a police investigator there to inform her her husband has been murdered. The police investigator interrogates her about Charles and she admits she knows so little about him.

The funeral service is sparce, only her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot) and the charming stranger Brian Cruikshank (Cary Grant) attend. Later three mysterious men appear at the funeral shocked to see Charles is dead. After the funeral she is approached by CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Mathau) who informs her that she has $200,000 that she doesn't know anything about that those three men are after. Charles and those men, along with a fifth man named Carson Dyle, were given $200,000 in gold to give to the French Resistance, but they stole it instead. Carson was shot and left for dead, and Charles double-crossed the others.

What happens next is a series of deaths and people are not who they say they are. What is absolutely clear to Regina is she is unsure as to trust Brian and as the viewer we're unsure, too. They fight and work together at times, and all Regina wants is for this ordeal to end fully cooperating with the three men and the CIA, who wants the money back.

This film is not at all predictable, it's fun. It's a completely joyous suspense thriller romantic comedy.