On January 28 and 31 Cineplex is playing the excellent 1963 movie Charade as part of the Classic Film series.
Directed by Stanley Donen, the film is kind of mix between a romantic screwball comedy and a thriller. Regina “Reggie” Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) while on a skiing trip decides she’s going to divorce her husband Charles when she gets back to Paris. While at the ski lodge she meets Peter Joshua (Cary Grant). When she returns to Paris she finds that her husband has been murdered.
The funeral is attended by three mean looking strangers, Tex Panthollow (James Coburn), Herman Scobie (George Kennedy) and Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass). Reggie meets with CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) who tells her the three men and her husband along with another man named Carson Dyle robbed the U.S. army of $250,000 in gold during WWII. The men murdered Dyle and then Reggie’s husband Charles double crossed the other three and took the money for himself. Bartholomew believes that Reggie is now in possession of the money and believes the other three men do to and will stop at nothing to get it.
Peter shows up to help Reggie to move into a hotel. He then helps protect her against the three men until Scobie tells her that Peter is in on it. Peter then tells Reggie that he is really Dyle’s brother and wants to trap the men who killed his brother. Later Bartholomew tells Reggie that Dyle had no brother. When confronted Peter/Dyle tells Reggie he’s really Adam Canfield a professional thief who only wants the money. Soon bodies start piling up.
The movie has many twists and turns and the chemistry and banter between Grant and Hepburn works. The film is a ton of fun.
