Charade

See also Charade Circuit for the race track and Charades for the game

Charade
original film poster
Directed by	Stanley Donen
Produced by	Stanley Donen
Starring	Cary Grant Audrey Hepburn Walter Matthau James Coburn George Kennedy
Music by	Henry Mancini
Cinematography	Charles Lang
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	December 5, 1963
Running time	113 min.
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Charade is a 1963 film written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, directed by Stanley Donen, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It also stars Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans several genres including suspense thriller, romance, and comedy.

The film is notable for its screenplay, especially the repartee between Grant and Hepburn, for its location filming in Paris, for Henry Mancini's score and theme song, and for the animated titles by Maurice Binder.

Plot

Regina 'Reggie' Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) meets a charming stranger calling himself Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) while on a skiing holiday in Megeve. She then returns to Paris, planning to ask her husband Charles for a divorce, but finds their flat empty and all their possessions sold. The police then notify her that her husband has been found murdered, thrown from a train.

She is also summoned to the US Embassy, where she meets CIA agent Hamilton Bartholemew (Walter Matthau). He informs her that Charles was involved in the theft of a payroll during World War II, along with 'Tex' Panthollow (James Coburn), Herman Scobie (George Kennedy), Leopold Gideon (Ned Glass) and Carson Dyle. Dyle was badly wounded and left behind to die, but the rest got away. Charles then doublecrossed the others and kept all of the loot for himself. Now the US government wants it back.

Reggie runs into Peter again; he offers to help her figure out what to do. She becomes attracted to him, even though he keeps changing his name periodically (simultaneously amusing and confusing her) and unabashedly admits he's after her late husband's money as well. The dead man's partners in crime show up for his funeral and, assuming Reggie knows where the money is hidden, demand their share. Unbeknownst to her, Peter is in league with them, though none of them trust each other.

The searchers begin turning up dead, first Herman, then Leopold. Reggie and Peter go to the location of Charles' last appointment and find an outdoor market. They also spot Tex there. Reggie and Peter split up, with Peter following Tex.

It is Tex who finally figures out where the money is hidden, when he sees a shop selling stamps; Charles had purchased rare stamps and stuck them on an envelope in plain sight. Peter realizes the same thing shortly afterwards and races Tex back to Reggie's hotel room, where Charles' possessions are kept. However, they come up empty. The letter has the stamps cut off.

Reggie had given the stamps to her friend's son. She runs into them at the market, only to learn that the little boy had traded the stamps away. Fortunately, the stamp seller is satisfied with having owned them, if only briefly, and gives them back to Reggie.

She returns to the hotel and finds Tex's bound body. Before he died, he was able to spell out the name of his killer: Dyle. One of the identities that Peter had assumed was Alexander Dyle, Carson's brother. Frightened, she telephones Bartholemew, who arranges to meet her. When she leaves the hotel, Peter spots her and gives chase.

Reggie hiding from the unmasked Carson Dyle.

Peter tracks her down to the rendezvous and Reggie is caught out in the open between the two men. Peter tells her that the man she thought was Bartholemew is really Carson Dyle and that he was the one who killed the others. Another chase ensues, ending with Dyle's death from a fall.

Reggie insists on turning the stamps over to the proper authorities, much to Peter's disgust. He refuses to accompany her inside the embassy, but when she goes to see the appropriate bureaucrat, Brian Crookshank, she is shocked to find Peter sitting behind the desk. After convincing her that he is actually a government official (by buzzing his secretary), he dispels her irritation at being deceived by promising to marry her...after she gives him the stamps. The movie ends with by a montage of all his different identities, with Reggie hoping that they have lots of boys, so she can name them all after him.

Production

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn

The movie was said to be an attempt by the studio to unite the popular stars Hepburn and Grant onscreen. Grant had previously been offered a role opposite Hepburn in Roman Holiday, but had turned it down because he felt he was too old to play her love interest. The role eventually went to Gregory Peck, but is often said to have been tailor-made for Grant.^{[citation needed]} Grant finally agreed to play Hepburn's lover in Charade, but in order to play down the 25-year age difference between them, he insisted that Hepburn's character be made the aggressor in the relationship.

The screenwriter, Peter Stone, and the director, Stanley Donen, have an unusual joint cameo role in the film. When Reggie goes to the U.S. Embassy to meet with Bartholomew, two men get on the elevator as she gets off. The man who says, "I bluffed the Old Man out of the last pot - with a pair of deuces" is Stone, but the voice is Donen's. Stone's voice is later used for the U.S. Marine who is guarding the Embassy at the end of the film.

Awards

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn were nominated for Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Musical/Comedy and Best Motion Picture Actress in Musical/Comedy. Screenwriter Stone received a 1964 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.

Copyright status

According to the Archive.org website and other sources, Charade is now in the public domain due to a legal irregularity: no claim of copyright was put into the original prints, even though that copyright notices were mandatory in the US prior to 1989. This error did not become a serious problem until the introduction of VCR equipment, which meant that companies could produce retail copies without the need to pay licence fees. As a result, there are many editions of Charade on VHS and DVD, of widely varying sound and picture quality. The restored Criterion DVD edition sells, on average, for ten times the cost of most DVD releases of the film. The film was included as a bonus feature on the DVD release of its remake, The Truth About Charlie.

Remakes

The movie was remade in 2002 as The Truth About Charlie starring Thandie Newton and Mark Wahlberg, and directed by Jonathan Demme.

Eva Green and David Strathairn are slated to star in a 2007 remake.^{[citation needed]}

Trivia

• When Peter and Reggie first arrive at the hotel room where she is staying, she asks where they are, to which Peter replies "On the street where you live," the name of a song in the musical My Fair Lady. Hepburn would play the leading role of Eliza Doolittle in the film version the following year.
• Grant's character tells Reggie his name is (at various times):
  • Peter Joshua
  • Adam Canfield
  • Alexander Dyle, Carson's non-existent brother
  • Brian Crookshank, his "real" name
• Henry Mancini's theme tune for the film was borrowed uncredited as the title-song for the 1965 Bollywood murder mystery Gumnaam.

External links

• Charade at the Internet Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Bruce Eder
• Legal download (Out Of Service as of Nov. 16 2006; check back later) at the Internet Archive
• Charade as a 21 episode serial - Free to watch and download (Windows format)

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