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Charade
1963 Comedy / Romance / Thriller
 Review
Stanley Donen, the director who helmed the musical classics Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
(1954), returned to form with this stylish Hitchcockian
comedy-thriller, after a fallow period churning out lacklustre
comedies. The dream pairing of the ever-popular Cary Grant with
Audrey Hepburn, the star of Donen’s earlier hit Funny
Face (1957), ensured the film was a great success.
Although a mere stone’s throw from the end of his career, Grant still
knew how to charm his ever-admiring audience into submission and
Hepburn is a delight, turning in what is possibly her best performance.Charade begins as a light-hearted romp, the playful banter between Hepburn and Grant making up for some glaring deficiencies in the plot. The film’s most memorable image is Grant taking a shower, fully dressed, in Hepburn’s bathroom – an attempt to lampoon the restrictions that the Hollywood code of yesteryear had imposed on Grant’s earlier features. Things soon hot up in the second half as the bodies start piling up, Hepburn loses track of Grant’s real identity and the audience struggles to work out who are the good guys and who are the villains. The film may not be as consistently brilliant as the Hitchcock thrillers it attempts to emulate but it is great fun and packs in a surprising number of good laughs along the way. Hepburn looks stunning in her Givenchy outfits whilst Grant is, as always, great entertainment value, terrific in the action scenes and irresistible in his scenes with Hepburn. Excellent use is made of the Paris location, including a suspenseful chase sequence in the metro that culminates in the nerve-wracking showdown. Henry Mancini’s haunting theme song is the icing on a deliciously succulent gâteau. © CinemaForever.com 2009 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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Director:
Stanley Donen
Starring: Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy Synopsis
Reggie Lambert returns from a holiday in the French Alps to learn that
her husband has been murdered, thrown from a train in his
pyjamas. Shortly before he died, Lambert liquidated all of his
assets, but there is no trace of the money he accumulated in doing
so. At the funeral, two mysterious men turn up to inspect
the corpse and subsequently start to harass Reggie, convinced that she
knows the whereabouts of Lambert’s missing fortune. Reggie is
informed by CIA spymaster Bartholomew that her husband once belonged to
a team of four men who, during WWII, were charged with delivering a
large sum of money to the French resistance. One of the men was
killed by the Nazis, but the others escaped after having hidden the
money. It appears that the two men who are intimidating Reggie
are Lambert’s former associates, determined to reclaim their part of
the stolen money. Reggie makes an unexpected ally in Peter
Joshua, a petty crook who also has an interest in Lambert’s
fortune. All is not what it seems, however...
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© CinemaForever.com 2009