Charade

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, great, glamorous movie stars and fantastic actors, meet up for a genre-bending masterpiece of the emerging 60s spy/secret agent cinema. With equal parts suspense-thriller, fluffy romance and dark comedy, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are allowed to be sexy, dangerous and goofy in equal parts. But this isn’t just a showcase for two of cinema’s greatest icons, this is a tightly structured, exceptionally well-written film. Charade is one of the greatest movies of all-time.

Once I saw the swirling arrows and color bars that animate the opening credits courtesy of Saul Bass, and heard the Henry Mancini score, I knew I was going to be in for quite a treat. Immediately after that Hepburn’s elegant beauty, intelligence and considerable skills and style filled the screen. I was entranced. She looked glamorous even when stuffing her face. Then a gun enters the frame, it turns out that it’s filled with water, but it showed me that this would be a film of tonal shifts and playing with expectations. And so it is. Who is who and who they are allied with changes at a break neck pace. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, you’re told something new and everything changes. Or does it? Can we really be all that sure? This is why Charade gets dubbed the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made. But it has its own flavor. Lighter than North by Northwest, less male ego-centric and slut-sexuality than the Bond franchise, it plays like a screwball comedy. But a hint of malice and danger is thrown in for good measure.

Grant and Hepburn aren’t the only actors doing the heavy-lifting but making it look effortless. They’re joined by James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau – each hitting the appropriate tone between kitsch and seriousness. And, naturally, each is after a MacGuffin. In this case, a large sum of money which has gone missing, Hepburn’s dead-husband was the last person to know its whereabouts. She is assumed to also know where it is, and so each positions himself to gain access to her and obtain the money, if she dies along the away, so be it. Except for Cary Grant…maybe. The night time rooftop fight scene between Grant and Kennedy is pretty shocking considering that this features Cary Grant. The man who’s very image is the concept of a handsome and charming movie star in real danger, or as close to it as this dark chocolate treat will get to it.

It isn’t just the acting and the script that makes Charade so memorable, it’s the Mancini score. It was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award, and it helps set the tone(s) for the film. Charade has everything going for it. While Grant, Matthau and Hepburn have all passed away, they continue to radiate as brightly, buoyantly as they did when this film was new in 1963.