The enduring popularity of Charade makes any criticism of the film nearly irrelevant. Most people who see the film will be so charmed that they won't care that it is a sleek star vehicle, that the plot is formulaic, or that the villains are cartoonish. If you are among the great majority that has enjoyed Charade, don't let me spoil your fun.

But I have to be honest. I spent most of the film frustrated by the film's familiarity. It especially resembles To Catch a Thief (1955), the Hitchcock romantic comedy/mystery/thriller starring Cary Grant that was also set in France. Add parts of Hitchock's North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, etc., and mix with Audrey Hepburn's familiar 'glamorous girl lost' persona from Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's, etc.

Regina Lambert (Audrey Hepburn) is divorcing a mysterious man whose secret is that he has stolen government gold during wartime. (This plot device would reappear in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Kelly's Heroes, and Three Kings). His conspirators include three colorfully eccentric 'bad guys', Tex (James Coburn), Herman (George Kennedy), and Leopold (Ned Glass). Herman has a hook for a hand, which is fitting since the 'stolen treasure' pretext is borrowed from pirate stories.

Glass is a curious casting as a villain. An elderly, bespectacled grouch; he looks like he would get winded ascending a staircase. Walter Matthau plays a no-nonsense government agent, also after the gold. As may be Cary Grant, who assumes a series of aliases to win the trust of Hepburn.

Cary Grant is one of my favorite comedy actors. It's fun watching him take a shower in his suit. The scene with a stern cleaning lady beating the dust from a rug in front of Grant is a classic. Hepburn is lovely and has a marvelous speaking voice. But Grant is pushing sixty, and while he looks good for his age, he seems to be an unlikely target for Hepburn's very forward machinations.

The pairing of Grant with much younger women (To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Father Goose), and Hepburn with much older men (Funny Face, My Fair Lady, Love in the Afternoon, Sabrina), was routine throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

All of the films I have just mentioned were very popular, which ensured that the miscasting of romantic leads would continue. If you reverse the genders to cast older women with much younger women in films of that era, you end up with Sunset Boulevard and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. In these films, the resulting romance is depicted as distasteful and predatory, with hints of mental illness assigned to the older woman. Hollywood's double standard still remains in place today.

The direction seems to be confused as to whether Charade is a comedy or a thriller. It must be the former, because the story is difficult to take seriously. The identity of the murderer is the most preposterous I have seen since Merv Griffin was unmasked as the elevator killer in Steve Martin's The Man with Two Brains. Grant wins a wrestling match with the much bigger and younger George Kennedy. (Grant had a similar rooftop confrontation in To Catch a Thief, which also resembles the opening scene of Vertigo and the climactic scuffles in the Hitchcock films North by Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, and Saboteur).

The funeral viewing has the villains taking turns making outrageous, threatening entrances and exits. We are to believe that the police won't notice the stamps, and that they can be sold for full retail, even after they have been ruined by apparently being affixed to a strip of cardboard. There's also a seven year old kid who comes and goes from the story without due explanation.

Hepburn's character is given the glamorous job of a translator for the United Nations. She shows no fear in visiting the assumed killers in their apartment. For someone allegedly in constant fear of her life, she is having a great time romancing the potentially dangerous Grant, while conducting a tour of the sites of Paris (similar to her tour of Rome in Roman Holiday).

Wrapped up with a blissfully happy ending, Charade is a crowd pleaser whose audience won't care if its all been done before, and better. By no means is it a bad film, but its charms cannot fully overcome its dubious conventions. (56/100)




Recommended: No

Write a Review