Charade

I’ve watched, for the first time since my teens, a classic comedy thriller, Charade. Charade stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn (as well as the likes of Walter Matthau and George Kennedy) and boasts a soundtrack from Henry Mancini when he was writing at his very best, so it’s not surprising that it achieved great popularity.

What I hadn’t realised before was that the screenplay was co-written by Marc Behm, author of a number of novels, including perhaps most famously The Eye of the Beholder. I first came across Behm’s name back in the 1980s, when Maxim Jakubowski produced one of those excellent Zomba omnibus volumes of his work (the same series introduced me to two wonderful American writers, Cornell Woolrich and Fredric Brown.)

Charade is an ok movie, but I have to say that on this viewing, I wasn’t entirely spellbound. The main attraction is undoubtedly the interplay between Grant and Hepburn, but the story-line is no better than competent. I much prefer Grant in North by North West, which has stood the test of time astonishingly well.