Charade was praised by critics for its screenplay and the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn.[6] It has been called "the best Hitchcock movieHitchcock never made".[7] It was filmed on location in Paris and contains animated titles by Maurice Binder. Henry Mancini's score features the popular theme song, "Charade".
In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[8]
Plot
While on holiday in the French Alps, Regina "Reggie" Lampert, an expatriate American working as a simultaneous interpreter, tells her friend Sylvie that she is divorcing her husband, Charles. She also meets Peter Joshua, a charming American.
On her return to Paris, she finds her apartment stripped bare. A police inspector says Charles sold off their belongings, then was murdered while leaving Paris. Their money is also missing. Reggie is given Charles's small travel bag, containing a letter addressed to her, a ship ticket to Venezuela, four passports in multiple names and nationalities, and other miscellaneous personal items. At Charles's sparsely attended funeral, three men show up to view the body. One sticks a pin into the corpse to confirm Charles is really dead.
Reggie is summoned to meet CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew at the American Embassy. She learns that the three men are Herman Scobie, Leopold W. Gideon, and Tex Panthollow. During World War II, they, Charles, and Carson Dyle were assigned by the OSS to deliver $250,000 ($4.2 million in current dollars) in gold to the French Resistance, but instead stole it. Carson was wounded in a German ambush, and Charles double-crossed the others, taking all the gold. The three survivors are after the missing money, as is the U.S. government. Hamilton insists Reggie has it, even if she does not know what or where it is—and that she is in great danger.
Peter finds Reggie and helps her move into a hotel. The three criminals separately threaten her, each convinced she knows where the money is. Herman then shocks her by claiming that Peter is in league with them, after which Peter says he is Carson Dyle's brother, Alexander, and is trying to bring the others to justice, believing they killed Carson. As the hunt for the money continues, Herman and Leopold are murdered. Hamilton tells Reggie that Carson Dyle had no brother. When she confronts Alexander, he says he is actually Adam Canfield, a professional thief. Although frustrated by his dishonesty, Reggie still trusts him.
Hepburn's character trapped in the prompt box
Reggie and Adam go to an outdoor market where Charles's last known appointment was. Spotting Tex, Adam follows him. At the stamp-selling booths, Adam and Tex each realize that Charles bought some extremely valuable stamps and affixed them to the envelope found in his travel bag. Both men race back to Reggie's hotel room, only to discover the stamps missing from the envelope. Reggie, who gave the stamps to Sylvie's young son, Jean-Louis, suddenly realizes their significance. She and Sylvie find Jean-Louis, but he has already traded the stamps to a dealer. They find the dealer, who says the rare stamps are worth $250,000 and returns them to Reggie.
Reggie returns to the hotel and finds Tex's body with the name "Dyle" scrawled next to it. Convinced Adam is the murderer, a frightened Reggie telephones Hamilton, who says to meet him at the Colonnade at the Palais-Royal. Adam sees her and gives chase. At the Colonnade, Reggie is caught out in the open between the two men. Adam claims Hamilton is really Carson Dyle: surviving the German ambush, he became obsessed with revenge and reclaiming the treasure. Reggie runs into an empty theater and hides in the prompt box. Carson is about to shoot her, but Adam activates a trapdoor under him.
The next day, Reggie and Adam go to the embassy to turn over the stamps, but Adam declines to go in. Inside, Reggie discovers that Adam is really Brian Cruikshank, a U.S. Treasury agent responsible for recovering stolen government property. With his true identity now revealed, he proposes marriage to Reggie.
The film ends with a split-screen grid showing flashback shots of Cruikshank's four identities; Reggie says she hopes they have lots of boys, so they can name them all after him.
Cast
Grant and Hepburn at the Théâtre du vrai Guignolet
Cary Grant as Brian Cruikshank (alias Peter Joshua, Alexander Dyle, and Adam Canfield)
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 serialized in Redbook magazine. The serial 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 Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, with Behm receiving story co-credit.
At the end of the film, Hepburn lists Grant's aliases, concluding, “I hope we have a lot of boys and we can name them all after you.” In the Criterion Collection's 1999 commentary, Stone laments the fact that the music swells to mask his “best closing line”. Donen tells him he can say it now and get his own back.[9]
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 was uncomfortable with their romantic interplay. To address his concerns, the filmmakers agreed to add dialogue that has Grant's character comment on his age, and Regina — Hepburn's character — being portrayed as the pursuer.[10]
Filming
Production began in Paris on October 22, 1962. About half the film was shot on location, with interiors being filmed at Studios de Boulogne. The scenes where Grant and Hepburn first meet were shot in January 1963 in a ski resort in Megève, in the French Alps.[1] Hepburn had just filmed Paris When It Sizzles that summer in a number of the same locations in Paris, but difficulties with the earlier production caused it to be released four months after Charade.
When the film was released at Christmas time, 1963, Audrey Hepburn's line, "at any moment we could be assassinated", was dubbed over with "at any moment we could be eliminated" due to the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The dubbed word stood out quite clearly, so 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.
Locations
All locations are in Paris save the railway and ski resort.
The film was slated for a Christmas release, but Universal consented to a one-time advance showing at the Palace Theatre in Washington, D.C., which was a benefit to raise money to help low-income children stay in school. Singer Ella Fitzgerald performed, and, according to Jet magazine, $50,000 was raised,[1] equivalent to almost a half-million dollars in 2023 money.
Reception
Hepburn publicity photo
Charade receives generally positive reviews, from 21st-century critics as well as contemporaries. The film has a 94% approval rating based on 54 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 8.50/10 and the consensus: "A globetrotting caper that prizes its idiosyncratic pieces over the general puzzle, Charade is a delightful romp with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn's sparkling chemistry at the center of some perfectly orchestrated mayhem."[6] On Metacritic the film has a score of 83% based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[11]
The movie premiered at the Radio City Music Hall, and in a review published January 6, 1964, in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther criticized the film for its "grisly touches" and "gruesome violence", but also praised it for its screenplay with regard to its "sudden twists, shocking gags, eccentric arrangements and occasionally bright and brittle lines" as well as Donen's direction,[12] said to be halfway between a 1930s screwball comedy and North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock, which also starred Grant.[12]
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".[13] While reviewing the blu-rayDVD version of the film, Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine gave the film a three-and-a-half out of five rating, calling it a "high-end, kitschywhodunit"[14] 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".[14]
Cary Grant was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, lighthearted approach to acting, and sense of comedic timing. He was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award, received an Academy Honorary Award in 1970, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. He was named the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999.
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn was a British actress. Recognised as a film and fashion icon, she was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third-greatest female screen legend from the Classical Hollywood cinema and was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List.
Roman Holiday is a 1953 American romantic comedy film directed and produced by William Wyler. It stars Audrey Hepburn as a princess out to see Rome on her own and Gregory Peck as a reporter. Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance; the story and costume design also won.
Peter Hess Stone was an American screenwriter and playwright. Stone is perhaps best remembered by the general public for the screenplays he wrote or co-wrote in the mid-1960s, Charade (1963), Father Goose (1964), and Mirage (1965).
Reggie is a given name, usually a short form of the name Reginald. It may refer to:
Saint-Jacques is a station on Line 6 of the Paris Métro. It serves Place Saint-Jacques in the 14th arrondissement. The Boulevard Saint-Jacques and Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques also intersect the square. It is one of only a few Métro stations that have a combined entrance and ticket hall at street-level.
Stanley Donen was an American film director and choreographer. Donen directed some of the most iconic films of the Golden Age of Cinema. He received the Honorary Academy Award in 1998, and the Career Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Four of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.
Two for the Road is a 1967 British romantic comedy-drama directed and produced by Stanley Donen, starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. The film tells the story of a married couple who reflect on their twelve-year relationship while on a road trip from England to the French Riviera. As they survey their foundering marriage in the present, the evolution of their relationship reveals itself through vignettes from four previous trips they took along the same route. The film was made from an original screenplay by Frederic Raphael. Supporting cast members include Eleanor Bron, William Daniels, Claude Dauphin, and Nadia Gray. Two for the Road was Hepburn's penultimate film before her semi-retirement in early 1967.
Megève is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Southeastern France with a population of more than 3,000 residents. The town is well known as a ski resort near Mont Blanc in the French Alps. Conceived in the 1920s as a French alternative to St. Moritz by the Rothschilds, it was the first purpose-built resort in the Alps. Originally it was a prime destination for the French aristocracy; it remains one of the most famous and affluent ski resorts in the world.
Arabesque is a 1966 American comedy thriller spy film directed by Stanley Donen and starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, written by Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Peter Stone based on The Cipher, a 1961 novel by Alex Gordon. The film, along with Donen's immediately prior film Charade (1963), is usually described as being "Hitchcockian", as it features as a protagonist an innocent and ordinary man thrust into dangerous and extraordinary situations. It was the last film of that genre which Donen would make.
Charles Bryant Lang Jr., A.S.C. was an American cinematographer.
The Truth About Charlie is a 2002 mystery film. It is a remake of Charade (1963) and an homage to François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960) complete with the French film star Charles Aznavour, making two appearances singing his song "Quand tu m'aimes". The film was produced, directed and co-written by Jonathan Demme, and stars Mark Wahlberg and Thandiwe Newton in the roles played by Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade.
The Carré Marigny, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, is the site of an open-air market where postage stamps are bought and sold by hobbyists and serious philatelists.
Masako Ikeda is a Japanese actress, voice actress and narrator from Tokyo, Japan. She is most known for the roles of Reika "Madame Butterfly" Ryuuzaki in Aim for the Ace!, Nodoka Saotome in Ranma ½, Maetel in Galaxy Express 999, Michiko in Harmagedon, and for being the Japanese voice-over actress of Audrey Hepburn.
Charade or charades may refer to:
Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) was a British actress who had an extensive career in film, television, and on the stage. Considered by some to be one of the most beautiful women of all time, she was ranked as the third greatest screen legend in American cinema by the American Film Institute. Hepburn is also remembered as both a film and style icon. Her debut was as a flight stewardess in the 1948 Dutch film Dutch in Seven Lessons. Hepburn then performed on the British stage as a chorus girl in the musicals High Button Shoes (1948), and Sauce Tartare (1949). Two years later, she made her Broadway debut as the title character in the play Gigi. Hepburn's Hollywood debut as a runaway princess in William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), opposite Gregory Peck, made her a star. For her performance, she received the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best British Actress, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. In 1954, she played a chauffeur's daughter caught in a love triangle in Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Sabrina, opposite Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. In the same year, Hepburn garnered the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for portraying the titular water nymph in the play Ondine.
"Charade" is a Parisian waltz with music by Henry Mancini and lyrics by Johnny Mercer performed in the 1963 film of the same name starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It was nominated that year for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
Fate seemed to pull the strings
I turned and you were gone While from the darkened wings
the music box played on.
Lampert is a surname of Western European origin, possibly from an Old Frankish name for the Lombards. It is also a given name. Bearers of the name include:
Charade: Music from the Motion Picture Score Composed and Conducted by Henry Mancini is a soundtrack album from the 1963 movie Charade starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The music was composed and conducted by Henry Mancini. It entered Billboard magazine's pop album chart on February 1, 1964, peaked at No. 6, and remained on the chart for 18 weeks. AllMusic gave the album a rating of four-and-a-half stars. Reviewer Stephen Cook called it "an easy listening tour of continental musical history" and "a great Mancini recording."
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
