Charade - 1963 film review

Charade is a film made by an accomplished director, Stanley Donen, who was here venturing into Hitchcock territory with a light thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The movie was a commercial success and boasted a theme song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. When I first saw it, the mix of crime with romance and comedy slightly underwhelmed me, and the same was true (as I said on this blog twelve years ago) when I took another look.

But time passes and views change and on a recent third viewing - intended as light relief in the lockdown era - I enjoyed it more. It's a well-crafted confection of highly commercial if highly derivative ingredients although not in the same league as, say, Hitchcock's North by North West, which is by far my favourite Cary Grant film.

The source material was a short story called "The Unsuspecting Wife", written by Peter Stone. He and Marc Behm (best known as author of The Eye of the Beholder) turned it into a screenplay. When this didn't sell, Stone turned the story into a novel, Charade, which did. Donen secured a high-calibre cast, including Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy.

Hepburn plays Regina, whose marriage is on the rocks at the start of the film. She's not too heartbroken to learn of the death of her husband Charles or to meet a charming man (Grant) who calls himself Peter Joshua. When it turns out that Charles was a crook who nicked a quarter of a million dollars that assorted villains want for themselves, Regina finds herself in danger. Peter comes to her aid - but what's his real game?

There are some good set-piece scenes and I enjoyed George Kennedy's steel claw, which reminded me of Major Whitlow in Mortmain Hall, not to mention Louis Crandell, the inspiration for my character! The Parisian backdrop adds to the movie's charm and overall it ranks as an agreeable piece of escapism. Very suitable at the moment!

Mirage

Mirage is a 1965 film which, I must admit, I’d never heard of before, yet it comes from the same stable as the better known Charade and Arabesque, and is arguably an improvement upon both those movies as a suspenseful mystery. The book on which it was based was written by a notable author, Howard Fast, who wrote various thrillers (that I haven’t read) under the name E.V. Cunningham.

Mirage opens with a blackout in a New York skyscraper. David Stilwell (played by Gregory Peck) is accosted by an attractive woman who claims to know him, but he doesn’t recognise her. She disappears rather mysteriously, and shortly afterwards he leans that a famous man had plunged to his death from the skyscraper moments earlier.

The plot duly thickens as it becomes clear that Stilwell is suffering from amnesia. What is going on? He hires a private eye, played by Walter Matthau in his inimitable fashion, to find out, but the gumshoe meets an untimely end.

There are hints of Cornell Woolrich style paranoia in the story-line, but the overwhelming influence is that of Hitchcock. Diane Baker, who plays the female lead, is not quite as glamorous as the typical Hitchcock blonde, and more importantly does not play her part in an especially compelling way. Nor does Peck make quite such an impact as Cary Grant at his best. But despite some weaknesses, I thought this was a decent thriller and I’m glad I watched it.

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.