Charade is an elegant and witty adventure. Audrey Hepburn is a UN translator whose husband is killed by a seemingly motiveless murderer. In her Paris home she is menaced by ex-soldiers James Coburn, Ned Glass and George Kennedy, fed confusing information by spy Walter Matthau and aided by the charming but elusive Cary Grant. The plot (five men who were behind enemy lines in wartime Germany stole a hoard of gold. Now four of them have come back to find the loot and the man who double-crossed them) is secondary to the suspense generated in the treasure hunt across Paris. The villains particularly Kennedy as a one-armed hood who literally makes sparks fly are genuinely menacing to poor Hepburn's sexy young widow, and trying to work out just on who's side Grant is provides much entertainment (especially as he changes identity every quarter of an hour). Charade's director Stanley Donen (former dancer and maker of musicals) easily out-Hitches Hitchcock. In its way, this was a hugely influential film. The villain with a metal hook motif was taken up again in the Moore Bond Live and Let Die, while the music and editing influenced the later Bond cycle (the film even has a pre-title teaser scene, a trait the later Bonds would make their own). The subplot, about stealing gold during wartime, provided the basis for the Clint Eastwood actioneer Kelly's Heroes and the recent George Clooney effort Three Kings. The photography, lighting and music (courtesy of Henri Mancini) are as good as if not better than anything the Bonds of the time could come up with (this is 1963, the same year as From Russia With Love). Particularly riveting is a rooftop fight between Grant and the one-armed Kennedy. This is one of the best fights in cinema history, nasty, suspenseful and with a viciousness that only the Dalton and Brosnan Bond movies have matched in the action films of recent years. When watching the film, you become aware that Grant was the model for the screen Bond. It's a pity he turned down Dr. No and never played the part, but at least here we have a taste of what his Bond might have been like. If you like comedy thrillers you won't want to miss a moment of this one. Director Donen, composer Mancini and scriptwriter Peter Stone reunited three years later for Arabesque, a suspenser with Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck in the Hepburn and Grant roles.
