Movie Review of
“Charade”
ost movies don’t stand up very
well to repeated viewings. I saw “Charade” (1963) again recently and found that, shorn
of the element of surprise coming from its final
revelations about character and plot, it is a pretty
scrawny thing underneath. The character reversals still
seem reasonably clever but the plot twist (concerning
the whereabouts of the missing loot, the basic McGuffin
of the movie) does not bear close examination. The
first time I went along for the ride. This time I took
a closer look and went nowhere.
Audrey Hepburn
plays Regina 'Reggie' Lampert, who is married to a
wealthy man about
whom she knows (and cares) very
little, and the feeling seems to be mutual. She is in
Switzerland mulling over the idea of a divorce. There
she runs into Peter Joshua (Cary Grant), a debonair
middle-aged man in a conservative suit (how well that
summed up the idea of male desirability in those
days!). When she returns to Paris, she finds that her
apartment has been vacated and her husband murdered
– after withdrawing all his money from the bank,
gathering his fake passports and buying a plane ticket
for Rio. She is devastated. Peter Joshua happens by and
takes her in hand. The police want to know what
happened to the money. So does a trio of rough-looking
customers (played by Arthur Kennedy, James Coburn and
Ned Glass) with whom Joshua may or may not be
connected. Colorful fights, ingenious deaths and
dangerous flirtations ensue, all shot on location in
the city of lights.
Director Stanley
Donen came to this project with a solid record for
making light romantic comedies, including “Damn
Yankees” (1958), “The Pajama Game”
(1957) and, most famously, “Singin’ in the
Rain” (1952) – the last of which is
mentioned by one of the characters in this movie! Here
he tries to add suspense to the mix of romance and
comedy, but this third element not only does not hold
up on its own but jeopardizes the other two. It may
have been a bridge too far for anyone. It’s not
too hard to make a good romantic comedy with a hint of
suspense; or a romantic thriller with a hint of comedy;
or an action comedy with a hint of romance; but I
can’t think of many good movies whose emphasis is
spread evenly over all three.
Donen’s trio
of heavies tries to supply both suspense and comedy and
succeeds at neither.
Grant trades in
witty repartee as profitably as anyone, and the
romantic chemistry between him and Hepburn is warm if
not torrid, but, with one exception, I would challenge
his performance here as a farceur. But what an
exception! The pass-the-orange scene deserves a place
in the comedy hall of fame. (One reason it probably
works so well is that it’s wordless.) Picture
Grant and Hepburn at a nightclub in Paris. The master
of ceremonies drafts everybody into a game on the dance
floor, dividing them into two teams and arranging each
team into a line, boys and girls alternating. He places
an orange under the chin of the first person in line.
The object is to pass the orange down the line without
using your hands. The result is basically a PG-rated
orgy.
I ask myself and my
readers now: can there have ever been a better party
game than this? Why didn’t we play this when I
was a kid? Why aren’t we playing it now? If we
did, the melancholy Eskimo might get out more often.
Hepburn gives us
that same combination of bold free spirit and
vulnerable young girl that she perfected in
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961).
Reggie is Holly Golightly Lite. With her easy-going,
old-world charm and aristocratic manners, Hepburn in
Europe is a natural fit, but I liked her better in Rome
(“Roman Holiday” – 1953) and London
(“My Fair Lady” – 1964).
The movie comes off
in the end rather like a poor man’s Hitchcock,
with vivid locales functioning like characters,
especially the empty theater in the climactic scene.
Hitchcock certainly knew how to add a dash of comedy to
his romantic thrillers, but he never let it have equal
billing.
My favorite part of
this movie is the opening credits sequence, which reeks
of a certain early ‘60s aesthetic, abstract yet
playful. This was the period when the artistic
potential of what had been a purely functional
structure began to receive serious attention, and
it’s great fun to see a film maker fashioning it
into a little hors d'oevre for the audience.
