Equal parts romcom, spy film and Givenchy showcase, Charade has remained one of cinema’s frothiest romantic thrillers for more than 60 years.
At its centre is a luminous Audrey Hepburn, cast against her typical onscreen persona in her first suspense film (though still draped in lavish custom outfits). No longer the wide-eyed ingenue introduced Roman Holiday (1953) and Sabrina (1954), she plays Regina “Reggie” Lambert, a jaded woman looking to end her loveless marriage – until her husband suddenly turns up dead, having taken a coveted $250,000 fortune (inflation!) to his grave. Reggie soon finds herself pursued across Paris by a gang of scenery-chewing ex-cronies (in one of the film’s memorably mordant scenes, they attend the funeral to inspect her husband’s corpse), as well as Cary Grant’s Peter Joshua, a silver fox who offers a sturdy shoulder to cry on (and his own covert connection to the money).
This 1963 film is a flighty caper pinned down by its two heavyweight leads, whose chemistry overcomes a noticeable age gap. Grant’s comedic timing hasn’t lost a beat since his screwball comedy heyday (see: the 1940 film His Girl Friday), where silly and sexy collided in bursts of rapid-fire repartee. When Reggie coaxes him into bathing in her room – “This is a ludicrous situation; I can think of a dozen men who are just longing to use my shower!” – he playfully takes a fully clothed shower underneath running water; his vaudeville routine is as absorbing as his soaked-through suit.
Yet the mercurial side to Grant’s star persona is also teased out. “There is a light and a dark side to him,” the critic David Thomson once wrote. “But whichever is dominant, the other creeps into view.” In a cheeky reference to North by Northwest, his canonised Hitchcock thriller, Peter’s real identity is not revealed until the last moment. A smooth manipulator with a convincing menace, there’s a persistent tension to his relationship with Reggie as it evolves.
On top of Grant’s presence, Charade’s exotic locales, opaque plotting and suspenseful set pieces have caused countless comparisons to Hitchcock’s mistaken identity thrillers over the years. Aesthetically, it feels like the early days of James Bond, particularly in how it privileges 60s chic over procedural spy craft – though it beats 007 to the punch with its own metal-clawed goon.
But in the hands of the legendary director Stanley Donen, Charade concocts its own uniquely incandescent escapist fare. Largely renowned for his musicals – not just for Singin’ in the Rain (1952), but Fred Astaire’s oft-intimated rotating ceiling dance from Royal Wedding (1951) – Donen keeps the film similarly light on its feet as it weaves between thrills, gags and plot twists.
As Reggie, Hepburn gamely keeps pace with the mounting chaos. She’s arguably never been funnier than she is under Donen’s direction, filtering the film’s overt silliness (bordering on spoof) through her wonderfully deadpan demeanour. The sight of Hepburn slinging barbed one-liners with an increasing exasperation is worth savouring – her comic timing remains tragically underutilised in her broader filmography. When the film swings back to peril, she never lets the audience forget that she has one of cinema’s most expressive faces.
Hollywood has never stopped making frivolous crowd-pleasers but it has long forgotten how to make bona fide movie stars – at least those at the level of Charade’s legendary leads. Charade would probably be remembered as a minor diversion were it not for the momentous pairing of Hepburn and Grant, as evidenced by Jonathan Demme’s 2002 forgotten remake starring Mark Wahlberg and Thandiwe Newton. For all its old-fashioned glamour and thrills, Charade functions foremost as a star vehicle. When both leads gloriously fill the screen, it’s impossible to resist. Or as Ayo Edebiri described it in her Criterion Closet Picks: this movie is “literally perfect, two hot people doing a heist”.
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Charade is streaming on SBS on Demand and Binge in Australia, and is available to rent on Amazon in the UK and the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
