Charade (February 5th and 6th and the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[CHARADE screens Saturday February 5th at 5:15pm and Sunday February 6th at 4:00pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

This high-gloss-entertainment romantic thriller, directed by journeyman Stanley Donen in a sort of Hitchcock comic-lite vein (Henry Mancini soundtrack instead of Bernard Herrman sets the tone, for one thing), exists in the public-domain on home-video. Pity poor fans who have only seen it in cheap, fuzzy, multiple-generation copies in which fine Technicolor details such as a prosthetic metal hook-hand striking sparks as it tumbles down a gradiant are blurry and indistinct, so catching it on the big screen in 35mm is a treat.

Audrey Hepburn plays lovely young widow Reggie Lambert, who returned to her posh Paris home from a ski trip to find her husband murdered. Judging from her attitude towards the guy, it is not an exceptionally tragic loss. The funeral brings out a bunch of creepy strangers - including the hook-hand guy and a young James Coburn - seemingly intent on making sure that Mr. Lambert really is dead. This motley crew hold Reggie and her child virtual prisoners.

One of the visitors (Walter Mattheau) claims to be a CIA agent. He explains that the deceased, during WWII, participated with a bunch of cutthroats in the looting of a fabulous fortune worth a quarter of a million dollars (yeah, that's all. $250,000. Wouldn't pay for the opening-credit-sequence CGI designer's cocaine and heroin use today. Excuse me while I go out and cry). Now the conspirators are back - one of them probably guilty of the killing - and assuming that Reggie knows where the money is. But is this character really CIA or one of the bad guys? And what about the suave Cary Grant, ostensibly a white-knight type named Peter? He also shows up claiming to be protecting Audrey but uses a variety of aliases and is spotted cozying up to the ruffians. Who is Reggie to trust?

Her costumer, for one thing. If all widows looked this good, then there ought to be a whole lot more of them (a great line, but I must confess I stole it from Larry Gelbart). Hepburn is almost over-the-top chic here, attired in glam Givenchy couture for the whole picture. But that's okay, it's all cool escapism from that period when the mid-1960s still had some innocent charm, and Henry Mancini's theme song plays itself so well in your head you don't need the MP3 device. Cary Grant would not long after retire from acting, preferring the camera lenses remember him going out as the same dashing bloke he was when he came in three decades earlier. CHARADE was remade a few years ago by Jonathan Demme under the sounds-like-a-committee-chose-it title THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE with Mark Walberg and Thandie Newton taking the place of the vintage stars. I never saw it. I don't think a lot of people did. Just another reason not to like this new century. 3 out of 4 stars.