Charade (1963 film)

Charade
original film poster
Directed by Stanley Donen
Produced by Stanley Donen
Screenplay by Peter Stone
Based on The Unsuspecting Wife
1961 short story[1]
by Peter Stone
Marc Behm
Starring Cary Grant
Audrey Hepburn
Walter Matthau
James Coburn
Music by Henry Mancini
Cinematography Charles Lang
Edited by Jim Clark
Production
company
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
Running time
 113 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3 million[2]
Box office $13.4 million[3]

Charade is a 1963 American romantic comedy mystery film directed by Stanley Donen,[4] written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass, and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres: suspense thriller, romance and comedy. Because Universal Pictures published the movie with an invalid copyright notice, the film entered the public domain in the United States immediately upon its release.[5]

The film is notable for its screenplay, especially the repartee between Grant and Hepburn, for having been filmed on location in Paris, for Henry Mancini's score and theme song, and for the animated titles by Maurice Binder. Charade has received generally positive reviews from critics, and was additionally noted to contain influences of genres such as whodunit, screwball and spy thriller. It has also been referred to as "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made".[6]

Plot

While on a skiing holiday, simultaneous translator Regina "Reggie" Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) tells her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot) that she has decided to divorce her husband Charles. She also meets a charming American stranger, Peter Joshua (Cary Grant). On her return to Paris, she finds her apartment stripped bare. A police inspector notifies her that Charles has been murdered while trying to leave Paris. Reggie is given her husband's travel bag, containing a letter addressed to her, a ticket to Venezuela, passports in multiple names and other items. At Charles' sparsely attended funeral, three odd characters show up to view the body.

Reggie is summoned to meet CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) at the U.S. Embassy. She learns that the three men are Tex Panthollow (James Coburn), Herman Scobie (George Kennedy) and Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass), the survivors of a World War II OSS operation. Together with Charles and a fifth man, Carson Dyle, they were to deliver $250,000 in gold to the French Resistance, but instead they stole it for themselves. Dyle was fatally wounded in a German ambush, and Charles double-crossed the others and took all the gold. The three survivors are after the missing money, as is the U.S. government. Bartholomew insists that Reggie has it, even if she does not know where it is. He tells her she is likely in great danger.

Peter locates Reggie and helps her move into a hotel. The three criminals separately threaten her, each convinced that she knows where the money is. Scobie then shocks Reggie by claiming that Peter is in league with the trio, after which Peter confesses to her that he is really Carson Dyle's brother, Alexander, intent on bringing the other men to justice because he believes they murdered Carson.

As the hunt for the money continues, first Scobie is found murdered, then Gideon. Reggie gets yet another shock when Bartholomew informs her that Carson Dyle had no brother. When she confronts him, Alexander admits he is actually Adam Canfield, a professional thief. Although frustrated by his dishonesty, Reggie still finds herself trusting him.

Reggie and Adam go to the location of Charles's last appointment and find an outdoor market. When they spot Tex there, Adam follows him. At the sight of stamp-selling booths, Adam and Tex each realize that Charles must have bought several extremely rare and valuable stamps which he affixed to an envelope that has been in plain sight among his possessions. Both men race back to Reggie's hotel room, only to find that Reggie has given them to Sylvie's son Jean-Louis for his collection. At the market, Reggie also realizes the envelope's significance. She learns that Jean-Louis sold the stamps to a trader, who returns the stamps and tells them how much each is worth.

Back at the hotel, Reggie finds Tex's body with the name "Dyle" scrawled next to it. Convinced that Adam is the murderer after all, a frightened Reggie telephones Bartholomew, who tells her to meet him at the Colonnade at the Palais-Royal. As she leaves the hotel, Adam spots her and gives chase. At the Colonnade, Reggie is caught out in the open between the two men. Adam tells her that Bartholomew is really Carson Dyle; he survived and became obsessed with exacting revenge on his ex-comrades and reclaiming the treasure. After another chase that ends in an empty theater, Reggie hides in the prompt box. Dyle discovers her and is about to shoot, when Adam activates a trapdoor beneath his feet and Dyle falls to his death.

The next day, Reggie and Adam go to the embassy to turn over the stamps, but Adam refuses to accompany her further. Going in, Reggie discovers that Adam is really Brian Cruikshank, the government official responsible for recovering stolen property. His true identity revealed, he proposes marriage. The movie ends with a split-screen grid showing flashback shots of Brian's four identities, while Reggie says she hopes that they have lots of boys, so they can name them all after him.

Cast in order of appearance

Production

Grant and Hepburn.

When screenwriters Peter Stone and Marc Behm submitted their script The Unsuspecting Wife around Hollywood, they were unable to sell it. Stone then turned it into a novel, retitled Charade, which found a publisher and was also serialized in Redbook magazine, as many novels were at the time. In Redbook it caught the attention of the same Hollywood companies that had passed on it earlier. The film rights were quickly sold to producer/director Stanley Donen. Stone then wrote the final shooting script, tailored to stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, with Behm receiving story co-credit.

Hepburn shot the film in the fall of 1962, immediately after Paris When It Sizzles, which she shot that summer in a number of the same locations in Paris, but production difficulties with that film caused it to be released four months after Charade.

When the film was released at Christmas, 1963, Audrey Hepburn's line, "at any moment we could be assassinated," was dubbed over to become "at any moment we could be eliminated" due to the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The dubbed word stood out quite clearly and all official video releases of the film have since restored the original dialogue, though some public domain videos taken from original release prints still carry the redubbed line.

Cary Grant (who turned 59 during filming) was sensitive about the 25-year age difference between Audrey Hepburn (33 at the time of filming) and himself, and this made him uncomfortable with the romantic interplay between them. To satisfy his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to add several lines of dialogue in which Grant's character comments on his age and Regina — Hepburn's character — is portrayed as the pursuer.[7]

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.

Reception

Critical reception

Charade has received generally positive reviews from critics, receiving a 92% approval rating based on 35 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average of 8.1 out of 10.[8]

In a review published January 6, 1964, in The New York Times by Bosley Crowther, the film was criticized for its "grisly touches" and "gruesome violence" despite receiving praise for its screenplay with regards to its "sudden twists, shocking gags, eccentric arrangements and occasionally bright and brittle lines" as well as Donen's direction,[9] said to be halfway between a 1930s screwball comedy and North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock, which also starred Cary Grant.[9]

In a Time Out review, the film was rated positively, with the assertion that it is a "mammoth audience teaser [...] Grant imparts his ineffable charm, Kennedy (with metal hand) provides comic brutality, while Hepburn is elegantly fraught".[10] While reviewing the blu-ray DVD version of the film, Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film a positive three-and-a-half out of five rating, calling it a "high-end, kitschy whodunit"[11] and writing that it is a "riotous and chaotic take on the spy thriller, essentially, but it structurally resembles Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as well as describing it as "some sort of miraculous entertainment".[11] MAD Magazine's parody "Charades", starring "Cary Grand" and "Audrey Heartburn" and directed by "Stanley Done-In", appeared in its issue 88 (July 1964).

Awards

Award Category Subject Result
Academy Award Best Original Song ("Charade") Henry Mancini Nominated
BAFTA Awards Best Foreign Actor Cary Grant Nominated
Best British Actress Audrey Hepburn Won
David di Donatello Golden Plate Won
Edgar Award Best Motion Picture Peter Stone Won
Laurel Awards Top Comedy 3rd place
Top Male Comedy Performance Cary Grant 2nd place
Top Female Comedy Performance Audrey Hepburn 3rd place
Top Song ("Charade") Henry Mancini 5th place

American Film Institute recognition

Public domain status

Grant and Hepburn

The film includes a notice reading "MCMLXIII BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES COMPANY, INC. and STANLEY DONEN FILMS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED", but omitting the word "Copyright", "Copr.", or the symbol "©". At the time (before 1978), U.S. law required works to include the word, abbreviation, or symbol in order to be copyrighted.[12][13][14] Because Universal put no proper copyright notice on Charade, the film entered public domain in the USA immediately upon its release.[5] Copies from film prints of varying quality have been available on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray based on its status in the public domain. The film is also available for free download at the Internet Archive.[15] However, while the film itself is public domain, the original music remains under copyright if outside of the context of the film.[16]

Soundtrack

  • "Bistro"
  • "Bateau Mouche"
  • "Megeve"
  • "The Happy Carousel"
  • "Charade (Vocal)"
  • "Orange Tamoure"
  • "Latin Snowfall"
  • "The Drip-Dry Waltz"
  • "Mambo Parisienne"
  • "Punch And Judy"
  • "Charade (Carousel)"

In 2012, Intrada Records released the complete score as heard in the film (the previous soundtrack album was a re-recording).[17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hawtree, Christopher (30 October 2007). "Obituary: Marc Behm". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  2. ↑ Walker, Alexander (1974). Hollywood, England. Stein and Day. p. 341.
  3. ↑ "Movie: Charade". The Numbers. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
  4. ↑ "Charade". TCM database. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved February 29, 2016.
  5. 1 2 Pierce, David (June 2007). "Forgotten Faces: Why Some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain". Film History: An International Journal. 19 (2): 125–43. doi:10.2979/FIL.2007.19.2.125. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 25165419. OCLC 15122313.
  6. ↑ Greydanus, Steven D. "Charade". Decent Films. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  7. ↑ Eastman, John (1989). Retakes: Behind the Scenes of 500 Classic Movies. Ballantine Books. pp. 57–58. ISBN 0-345-35399-4.
  8. ↑ "Charade". Rotten Tomatoes. 5 December 1963. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  9. 1 2 Crowther, Bosley (6 December 1963). "Audrey Hepburn and Grant in 'Charade': Comedy-Melodrama is at the Music Hall Production Abounds in Ghoulish Humor". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  10. ↑ "Charade". Time Out. London. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  11. 1 2 Cabin, Chris (21 September 2010). "Charade - Blu-ray Review". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  12. ↑ Yu, Peter K. (2007). Intellectual Property and Information Wealth: Copyright and related rights. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-275-98883-8.
  13. ↑ "Charade". Internet Archive. Retrieved 1 February 2011.
  14. ↑ "Charade". intrada.com. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
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