To be reminded of the shock that Charade, Stanley Donen’s kitschy whodunit from 1963, was met with upon its release is to glimpse briefly at how suspense and horror have come to inform modern-day comedy films. Donen’s classic begins with the image of a corpse being thrown from a passenger train, the man’s dead eyes left to stare at the audience before the Technicolor dizziness of the opening titles kicks in. And this is the most courteous end that any character in Charade will meet by quite some margin.
Would present-day viewers “blanch in horror” over these images, as Bosley Crowther of the New York Times suggested they might upon the film’s release at New York City’s Music Hall? To deny the macabre undertones and “ghoulish humor” that Crowther spoke of, though, would either denote obliviousness or a cynicism so great that nothing short of outright torture could possibly produce a guffaw. Soon after the titles end, a gun being is being pointed at Mrs. Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn), a rich American translator living in France and the unknowing widow of Charles, the aforementioned corpse.
Turns out it’s just a water gun, being fired by the son of one of Regina’s friends. But soon she finds herself in a darker strain of trouble when she arrives in Paris to identify the body and is notified that Charles was in possession of $250,000, which he stole, allegedly, with his O.S.S. buddies while on assignment during World War II.
Donen primarily worked as a director of musicals, and regardless of whether you categorize it as a thriller or a comedy, Charade is most certainly not a musical, though many of its scenes play out with stupendous rhythm, both visually and through performance. The introduction of Charles’s O.S.S. partners-in-crime at the man’s funeral exudes an especially buoyant comic precision like that of a seasoned percussionist. The first partner, Gideon (Ned Glass), merely sneezes, and the second, Tex (James Coburn), only goes as far as to hold a mirror up the corpse’s nose; the third man, Scobie (George Kennedy), finds it more suiting to check the deceased by sticking him with a pin. All of this is interjected by key reaction shots from Hepburn and the indelible image of a bored inspector (Jacques Marin) clipping his fingernails.
What ensues is a riotous and chaotic take on the spy thriller, essentially, but it structurally resembles Agatha Christie’s And Then There Was None. The trio of villains pressuring Regina for the location of the $250,000 would be enough for Ms. Christie, but Peter Stone’s wonderfully inventive screenplay supplies one more dilemma that reveals itself in the form of a mysterious stranger, originally going by the name of Peter Joshua (Cary Grant).
Grant’s character, a figure whose job and intentions shift nearly on the hour, develops a romantic plot with Ms. Lampert, but also has an unknown stake in the $250,000, which may be as simple as thievery or as complex as international relations. Decked out in Givenchy wardrobes and given a deeper shade of humor by Henry Mancini’s playful score, the five figures run loops around each other and lie incessantly to unearth Charles’s hiding place, even as they attempt to appease or dodge America’s ambassador to France, played by Walter Matthau.
Charade is self-aware and self-parodying without ever feeling detached. Hepburn is funny and flighty, effortlessly letting us feel the pleasure of what it might be like to be seduced by Grant’s unpredictable charmer. Grant’s exchanges with Hepburn recall, at moments, that greatest of all studio comedies, Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday, only Charade is a film with a significant body count (one character is brutally stabbed in the neck). It also boasts exemplary action scenes, such as a fist fight at the top of an American Express building.
Donen’s extraordinary style, smart use of French locations, and sure sense of tone can be blamed for the fact that Charade is sometimes mislabeled as part of Hitchcock’s oeuvre. The film has many lessons lying in its tricky narrative but none as prominent as the dire need for even filmed entertainments to be treated with intelligence and respect.
Treading into murky waters where death dared to be handled lightly, Donen succeeds in keeping focus not on the particularly vicious demises, but rather on composition, performance, and montage. The thought of these facets being deployed in the service of intelligent and appealing entertainment seems as startling now as the site of a suffocated cadaver was then.
Image/Sound
The level of color punch and detail on display across the new 4K digital restoration is stunning, as evident in the scene where Regina finally puts the puzzle together. Even more than that, the depth of fields, clarity, and black levels are of the show-off variety. The fight between George Kennedy and Cary Grant’s characters on the former American Express Building and the “shower scene” are particularly dazzling. The uncompressed monaural soundtrack isn’t a show pony, but the front-and-center dialogue is consistently clear and crisp-sounding.
Extras
Not counting Charade’s theatrical trailer, the sole disc extra is the commentary, recorded exclusively for Criterion in 1999, by director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone, who both sound enthused and confident throughout, making for a fine, informative listen as they discuss the film’s production history, including the location shooting, its initial reception, and more. In the accompanying booklet essay, titled “The Spy in Givenchy,” film historian Bruce Eder focuses on Charade’s unique place among the thrillers of its time.
Overall
Stanley Donen’s kitschy, masterfully directed whodunit Charade gets a snazzy new 4K digital restoration courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
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